“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I had many questions after the call, of course. I felt sad for Jane and what was happening to both of us. I also felt angry at the role she’s chosen, even while I thought I understood it, basically. When Jeff called I was reading the last portion of the first session in Jane’s book, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events — for April 18, 1977, in connection with a note I’m doing for Dreams. The passages are on death and suicide — natural death, no less, and how we continually interfere medically with people’s chosen time of death. Hardly a coincidence, I realized.

(I was also angry that Jane hadn’t allowed anything to come through in sessions about herself for some time. I think this means that her sinful self, or whatever, has once again clamped down. It doesn’t want her to recover. The great question, then, is why those portions of the self would — and do — continue their terribly destructive ways, even to the point of bringing about their own death — for if allowed to, I think, death would be the end result, the final step along their chosen path.

(Jeff suggested that we do nothing at the moment, while he monitors Jane’s condition. Her temperature has varied, but has generally been okay. Yesterday afternoon it had been 100, but after supper it was down to 98.7. This morning it was a bit lower. I told her the swelling on her right shoulder looked a bit reduced. But her cheeks are swollen and somewhat blotchy, which Jeff had noticed this morning. Later in the afternoon the cheeks and shoulder both looked a bit better, and Jane acted better.

(Yesterday I’d told Jane that I knew her “body was up to something.” But what? I said that I hoped it wasn’t another case of her improving while getting worse — which I used to rant about in years past. We had a long talk. I said I wanted information on whether she wanted to live or die — or whether she was trying to die her own natural death, in line with that excellent information in Mass Events. I wanted to know what her sinful self thought about what it was doing to her body, if it cared, if it even understood that it’s protective actions threatened its own existence. Or was her death the ultimate goal of the sinful self? I said the situation must be a common one. I felt I was onto something here, but wasn’t quite sure what — something close to the more basic human condition that is little understood. I told Jane it would be a joke if those portions of the self we’re blaming for her condition, really are the truest, most simple and honest portions after all, and that their roles in bringing about her natural death were being subverted by our conscious-mind meddling and interference. Just where is the “truth”? I asked.

(We also discussed Jane’s fears that she’d done all she could in this life, and thus was ready to bow out of physical existence. I told her that if she wanted to leave I couldn’t, and wouldn’t try to hold her back, and that I’d never have her hooked up to survival equipment. I wouldn’t want that done to me, either. And all the time we talked I couldn’t help but just miss, just fail to understand exactly why she was doing what she was doing. Nor have I forgotten Seth’s statement a few months ago that basically neither of us have done anything wrong.

(But so fearful and reluctant are we to face or to grasp ideas about death that run counter to what we’ve been taught, that we’ll literally do almost anything to ourselves in order to prevent nature’s plan from working in its own natural and creative way. How can we really go against what’s been drummed into us since the day we were born?

(During our talk I’d cited a long list of things that in my view Jane has given up over the years, at the never-satisfied behest of portions of the personality that were now in complete control. It’s all gone now except for her lying in bed, and she can’t even do that in peace these days. She’d even given up all reading, even with the new glasses we so eagerly sought from Jim Baker. The supporting easel I’d made for her to use in reading, sits in the closet of 330. Jane used it just once. She said she doesn’t use it or do any reading because of the longer sessions.

(After my nap I asked her why she didn’t read more, to keep in touch with the world, and got quite a response from her. She got angry and shouted that she would read more if I wanted her to. I laughed — my first of the day, I said — and told her that she was only saying that because I wanted her to read more — not because she’d suggested that she do so on her own. Later, she did suggest I bring in some reading matter. I told her that Mass Events was still a terrific book. “So why isn’t it a household word?” I asked. No answer.

(At the end of her outburst about reading, Jane ended up by saying something important — that her failure to read was another example of her doing something wrong — “And that’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it? All those things I’m doing wrong?” Too true. When I said I wouldn’t bug her any more about reading, she said I talked like a martyr. So how can one win in such a situation, when either way is rejected?