“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(A week or so ago Jane had invited the Lords, Cec and Jim, to the house for last Saturday evening. Saturday morning, then, as I was in Robinson’s lumber for parts for Jane’s chair, I met Curt Kent, who used to work with Cec and myself at Artistic; I haven’t seen Curt for perhaps two years, Cec since last Christmas. Jane also invited the Weissenbuehlers Saturday evening. When Jane called, Ellspeth told her she’d been working at fixing up or restoring an old chair—as I was working with an old chair for Jane. When they arrived Saturday night, Ellspeth and Heinz brought with them some homemade cheesecake. It happened that Saturday afternoon I’d taken a package of frozen cheesecake out of the freezer and thawed it out with the intention of serving it Saturday evening. It was still sitting on our kitchen counter when Ellspeth and Heinz carried their cheesecake in. Then when Debbie Janney arrived Saturday evening, she told me that she had just missed meeting me at Steiner’s photo studio earlier that week; going there to have a portrait taken, she’d seen by accident the enlargements of my parents that Mr. Steiner was making for me. I was due to pick them up the next day, and she asked Mr. S. to tell me she’d been there, but he forgot to mention it.

(Jane was quite relaxed as she told me she wanted a session at about 8 PM. Both of us had slept for better than two hours this afternoon, and felt that we could sleep even more. The evening was beautiful. Frank Longwell had visited at noon, and I’d showed him the new chair I’d made for Jane, based on his design. She is doing much better with the chair, by the way. My back still bothers, but perhaps to a slightly lesser degree. I haven’t been getting in much painting time for the past week.

(Last Saturday, the 6th, was not only “chair day,” as I told Jane, but seemingly synchronicity day also. Four little events took place, or culminated on that day, that certainly seemed to be more than mundane “coincidence.”

Now: there are obviously beneath the psychological areas that you recognize many other deeper layers of action and interaction. It is actually at those levels that the world of material activity is ordered and supported. It is beneath the usual cause-and-effect area that the true “causes and effects” lie. You have, again, perceived some small clues as to such inner behavior. These clues are seemingly oddly assorted ones involving such issues as cheesecake, the repair of an old chair, old photographs and a photography shop, and the meeting of an old acquaintance after some period of time.

(Just last night Jane sat up in her chair all night—literally—letting me put her on the commode at about 2 AM. [...] When I had to change the dressings on her ass this morning, before putting her back in her chair, I saw that the sores were worse than ever—an angry, irritated red—and spreading. [...]

[...] Finally, I pulled her cushion back in her chair as she sat on it. [...] The movement, less than half an inch, I’d say, did change physical relationships of body to chair. [...]

[...] Then: “I’m safe here in the chair, but I’ve got to get back over there somehow.” [...] I do it every morning—I’ll try to do it now,” she said, restlessly shifting from side to side in the chair. [...]

[...] Jane leaned so far to her left in the chair that I had to support her in it lest she overbalance the chair. [...]

The physical matter that is the chair, or rather Ruburt’s chair, is formed as I explained, and no atom in it is the same today and tomorrow. [...] You construct your own chair in the same manner, using different energy; and again no atom of your chair is the same today and tomorrow.

When he is not at all concerned with the chair, he does not bother to construct it. He could be miles away, suddenly imagine this room, and instantaneously construct the chair. [...]

That same chair, so to speak, is constructed differently by everyone who enters your home. [...] There are rather amusing slip-ups here that do occur, as when you bunk into a chair, for example. [...]

“You forget” (in quotes); that is, you forget to construct the chair in its correct location. [...] But you remember just in time, construct your chair where your knee is.

A chair is a chair for your purposes. [...] As you read this book you most probably lounge on a chair or couch or bench — all quite sturdy and real. The atoms and molecules within those chairs and couches are quite alert, though you do not grant them the quality of life. [...] The atoms and molecules that make up a chair play a different kind of ring-around-the-rosy, and are involved in constant motion, forming a certain pattern that you perceive as a chair.

The differences in motion are so divergent that to you the chair, like your body, appears permanent. The atoms and molecules, like the children, enjoy their motion — solidly sketched in space from your perspective, however, with no “idea” that you consider that motion a chair, or so use it.

[...] No one perceives the same chair [all of the time], though perhaps a given chair will seem to be “the same one” seen from different angles.

[...] In greater terms, any given chair is never the same chair. [...]

We will again use this chair, this time to explain our point. The chair is being constantly constructed. Now the chair represents a subdivision in matter, being what you term dead matter, though we know that consciousness is everywhere.

You know that you cannot perceive with the outer senses the pulsations of energy as they form this chair; because you cannot perceive these pulsations, the chair appears durable, a part of your time and space, and continuous in time and space.

(Willy dozed in his favorite chair. [...]

[...] Now she walked over to a cane chair that was unoccupied.)

Framework 2 was involved, and so was the chair and so was Frank’s return. In the back of your mind you questioned whether giving him a new, more comfortable chair to work in was or was not a smart thing to do: would it encourage him to retreat to his room and his writing, and simply serve to intensify old conditions? [...] Your fears, brought to the forefront by the Gallagher episode the week earlier, again surfaced with the event of the chair and Frank’s return. [...]

(Yesterday, also, Jane received the chair I’d ordered as a Christmas present early in December. [...]

[...] So he spoke of his new chair and the Wanda incident and the piece of jewelry (from Frank) in one breath. [...]

[...] The episode jelled, however, and at lunch time, when the chair had already been delivered and was an accomplished fact also. [...]

(During the night Jane has also more or less settled into a routine of laying down for a couple of hours, then sitting in her chair for an equal time, and even sleeping in it, then going back to bed. [...] I usually get up at least three, and usually four, times during the night to help her change from chair to bed to chair, etc.)

[...] As soon as she finished eating she began to nap in her chair as she sat bundled up at the card table in the living room. [...]

[...] She’s fallen into a regular, very narrow pattern of eating, watching TV, and sleeping, either in her chair or in bed, night and day. [...]

(I’d also run errands to the post office, supermarket and drugstore while Peggy assisted Jane, and by the time I got back Peggy had managed to get Jane from the bed back into her chair—but it hadn’t been easy, Jane said later, and she hadn’t been able to describe to Peggy just how I did it myself with little effort. [...]

[...] Jane sat quite still in her rocking chair. [...]

[...] The first was that she was momentarily disoriented when she came out of trance because the chair she was sitting in was not where she thought it was while speaking for Seth.

[...] She thought the chair was several feet to her own right, closer to our wall-to-ceiling bookcase. [...]

(Again, she felt quite disoriented when she finally opened her eyes and saw the position of her chair, compared to where she had thought it was. [...]

[...] Jane had sat in her chair at the card table the whole time—in fact, she’s been in her chair since about 7:30 AM; she hasn’t gone to the john or laid down. [...]

(At about 4 PM yesterday Jane called me out to the card table to show me the much improved movements she could make with her head: She rotated it more freely up and down and from side to side, her whole body participating somewhat as she sat in her chair. [...]

[...] Jane did experience feelings of panic when she moved from her chair to the bed, and on another occasion. She hadn’t wanted to try getting on the bed from her chair, but I talked her into making the effort, and she did very well. [...]

[...] 3. How she’s going to manage sitting in a chair. I said I didn’t care about the holidays, but that she shouldn’t worry about the chair bit. [...] I added that no one knew how they managed to sit in a chair—all the thousands of motions, impulses, cellular actions, etc. [...]

[...] I hadn’t realized she was still focusing on how she was going to get to be able to sit in a chair, however. [...]

[...] I wanted Jane to lie down also, since she’d sat in her chair since about 7:30 this morning. [...] She’d been dozing in the chair and woke up feeling that way. [...]

[...] She still sleeps in her chair most of the day.

[...] The skirts, of heavier material, are designed to go around my wife as she sits in her chair. [...]

[...] Jane alternated between rather quick changes in waking and sleeping in her chair. [...]

(“Well, at least I’m somewhat comfortable in the chair tonight,” Jane said as we waited at 8:58. “I can lean back somewhat—but I’m always the most uncomfortable in the chair. [...] They also help me when I move around in the chair.” [...]

(Jane kept shifting around in her chair....)

[...] Jane’s delivery had been quite good, although she hadn’t appeared to be too comfortable in her chair. [...]

[...] You saw no one in this position (in the chair), and physically not even a chair was here. [...]

When Ruburt on the couch sensed himself in the chair giving a session, to himself on the couch, this was symbolic of a new kind of relationship between the two of us. [...]

[...] Ruburt sat physically on the couch, yet at another level he did sit here (in the chair facing the couch), and in our relationship that was a fairly “sophisticated” kind of manipulation, involving the projection of a form outward—the double. [...]

[...] I imagined the different ways magazines like The National Enquirer could trick someone into giving an interview to start with, and turn people against each other, (Carol Burnett is suing that paper—the story was in the news lately.) From there some wild stuff that doesn’t make sense now, with strange things happening to my chair pillow as I sat on it.... [...] Another kid pulled my chair out from behind me so that when I went to sit down I fell on the floor instead. [...]

[...] She said that at the end Seth had another remark to make, but that she didn’t have the energy to get it out: “And thank you for fixing my chair.” This is a humorous reference to my putting a new seat in Jane’s favorite Kennedy rocker—her session chair, etc.

[...] This also has to do in our own private sessions, with Ruburt’s slowness and difficulty getting out of the chair—to show you that he is paying for the success of the sessions.

(Humorously:) And thank you for fixing my chair.

[...] The things that paid off, the things that were indeed quite effective, were these: again, your chair suggestion —remind me to return to that, for I have not mentioned some other reasons why I would like it stressed—it being the chair; the table in the kitchen, with all of the implications of additional cooking and involvement; your remark (last week) that Ruburt’s face looked much better than it did in those old photographs; your bringing in the flowers; your lovemaking, which I will discuss; and Ruburt’s point-of-power exercises. [...]

[...] The impetus further led him around the kitchen, usually in the chair, but often to take steps in a different way from one point to another. [...]

Now: use of the chair is important because it does increase his mobility in this stage; but also because it exercises the knees while the rest of the body is in a comparatively normal position, with the back, shoulders, and head fairly upright. [...]

[...] Framework 2 operates beautifully when you let it, as per your suggestion about the chair, and the kitchen table. [...]

(Jane now added the information that the concept of action reminded her of the “red chair episode.” [...] An office with a modern red leather chair, small room, stories high, not at all elegant...” [...] After the session Jane was able to give a more detailed description of the red leather chair. [...]

(Jane said she found herself then considering just sitting quietly in her chair, after the pulsation had manifested itself. [...]

[...] She’d mentioned a session earlier in the day, and so had I. At the same time she’d slept in her chair most of the day, and was doing so again at the card table, when I finally got out there at about 7:55. [...]

(Today I’d asked her if she come up with any insights on her own as to why she was still sleeping so much in her chair, even after being home from the hospital for six months. [...]

(“When I get comfortable in my chair, then I start drifting,” Jane said as I worked on these notes. [...]

[...] She sat in one of the porch chairs while I stood up so I could move about and keep warm. [...]

The room: A green modernistic plastic chair with wooden legs. [...]

([The Gallaghers:] “There was a green modernistic chair with wooden legs in our room. [...]