“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The child was male as given in the session. The month of February was mentioned; and in February she signed the papers putting the child up for adoption. “Turnabout with the child, a complete change of plan or a turnabout” refers to the fact that she wanted to keep the baby but its father refused to marry her and pushed her into having it adopted; she was a minor also at the time. 1947 is mentioned, the year she met the child’s father; the age 17 is mentioned; she was 17 when she met him: a school connection mentioned and she was still in school at the time.

(After that session I checked out Peg’s notes with Barbara. Unfortunately now I can’t put my hands on Barbara’s scrawled script but will find it and include it here. A man with a bristly mustache and short bristly hair was mentioned in the first part of the spontaneous session for which no notes were taken; this referred, Barb said, definitely to her father. The main point is that then Barb told me that the male child referred to the illegitimate child of a girl friend and that all the other details given were correct, in reference to this child.

(Now approximately six months later, she told me last night that the session had shocked her considerably. The child had been her own illegitimate child, she had not wanted to tell us this at the time and had been too surprised at the session to do anything; she had wanted to leave but hadn’t it seems been able to.

(Toward the end of the session, I was in an emotional turmoil, still in trance and for this Barb told me at the time she had no explanation. I thought I was in a hospital room. Most likely this was my interpretation of her giving birth to the child; she was supposed to have a Caesarean section but didn’t and was in labor 25 hours; a woman is described here, gray hair, buck teeth, yellow teeth—this, Barb says, is a description of the man’s mother—she wanted him to marry Barb: teeth not really buck but protuberant and yellowed; also gray hair. she does not remember the room number at the hospital or the color of the walls [given as green].)

In a way the child allowed itself to be hypnotized into the condition, the symptoms becoming potent physical “posthypnotic” suggestions. The parents did not want the child to suffer. [...] She was overly fearful, ironically enough, for the child’s safety—and hence he developed a condition that kept him under scrutiny all the while.

(Pause.) The child wanted to please the parents. [...] The child responded in such a manner because of its own characteristics. Another child, for example, might have become overactive in rebellion. [...]

[...] If not, of course, one member or another may become ill, or the child might have a relapse. As probabilities go, however, the child’s experience is enough to show it that such illness can indeed vanish overnight. Now that knowledge is a part of that child’s experience, and the cure will be the great event of his life, in that it will always be in the back of his mind as he grows. [...]

Unfortunately, cries of pain brought the child instant attention, and they were often exaggerated. The child wanted out, finally, but did not know how, for he had allowed the destructive game to become real.

When he was not docile as a child there was vicious instant retaliation of a most complicated nature. [...] But, and here Joseph we come to the real heart of the matter, the mother retaliated in the main not by a direct attack upon the child, but by causing the child to believe that its misbehavior could be, and very nearly was, going to result in the death of the mother. As any child does, the child at times wished for the parent’s death, and here we see the mother acting out her own death in order to punish the child.

The child took all this as the punishment for violence. [...] This made the child hold back the most natural of aggressive feelings. In most cases the child can slap the parent. [...]

[...] But Ruburt did not even dare to express his violence verbally, because of the parent-child relationship. Added to this was the fact that the child loved the parent much more strongly, you see, than the parent ever loved the child.

The child even then realized that violence and aggression was somehow connected with his mother’s illness. [...] To the child the father simply vanished from the face of the earth, an equally fearful fate.

The child understands that it is itself, and yet that it is simultaneously a portion of its parents, alive within their lives (intently), as well as within its own. In calling out to them, the child calls out to a quality of its own us-ness. The child expects the parents to come to its support in the same way that it expects its own fingers and toes to support its various positions and decisions. The child understands that in a certain fashion (underlined) the parents are an extension of its own identity. [...]

[...] The child’s explorations of its environment are in a fashion quite different from its later adolescent explorations of the world. A child’s curiosity goes out in all directions. [...]

(9:13.) A child may think “We will go to sleep now”—meaning quite happily that (pause) its own single consciousness also participates in the conscious life and activities of everything else in its environment, so it and the creatures of the night, say, sleep together, and waken together to greet the dawn. In such a way the child actively participates in the consciousness of nature—and I am not speaking of an imaginative or symbolic participation alone, but of an awareness of the multiplicity within itself and of other creatures. [...]

[...] The child does not have to cry out or address or search for a particular kind of God, because it understands through such subjective behavior that its own precious singularity is also a part of the greater us-ness of all other creatures, and that its singularity is automatically assured, as is its own us-ness within that larger context. [...]

[...] Some are simply too busy to question a child about his own illness. It is far simpler to give a child aspirin, and send a child to bed with ginger ale and a coloring book.

[...] This is particularly true when parents actually reward a child for being ill. In such cases, the ailing child is pampered far more than usual, given extra special attention, offered delicacies such as ice cream, let off some ordinary chores, and in other ways encouraged to think of bouts of illness as times of special attention and reward.

[...] Again, the reasons for such behavior are often quite clear in the child’s mind. So if the parents begin such questioning and reassurance when the child is young, then the youngster will learn that while illness may be used to attain a desired result, there are far better, healthier ways of achieving an end result.

Some parents, unfortunately, use the nature of suggestion in the most undesirable way, so that a child is often told that he or she is sickly, or weak or overly sensitive, and not as robust as other youngsters. If that kind of behavior is continued, then the child soon takes such statements as true, and begins to act upon them, until they do indeed become only too real in the youngster’s everyday experience.

Your child, in a past life, this child was an uncle and in an accident you killed him. [...]

[...] Regardless of what you thought consciously therefore, you still inwardly blamed yourself for letting the child go, and therefore the difficulty with the womanly organs.

[...] But subconsciously you wondered what social environment your child would really (underlined) encounter„ and whether or not you deprived him of the social and economic benefits that you have convinced yourself, consciously, you do not need.

You also wondered about depriving your mother of a grandchild now, for though you tell yourself she would not understand, still you wonder if interest in the child would not give her additional impetus and interest.

[...] The fact remains that the child receives patterns of behavior, gently nudging it to grow in certain directions. In normal learning, of course, both parents urge the child to behave in certain fashions. Beside this, however, certain general, learned patterns are biologically transmitted to the child through the genes. [...]

(10:54.) The child is simply the male child. [...] The male child does not possess an identity so focused upon its maleness. [...]

The child is not born a sponge, however, empty but ready to soak up knowledge. [...] I am saying here that to some extent the child in the womb is aware of the mother’s beliefs and information, and that to some extent (underlined) it is “programmed” to behave in a certain fashion, or to grow in a certain fashion as a result.

The child, also, uses such information as a guide only; as a premise upon which it bases early behavior. As the mind develops, the child immediately begins to question the early assumptions. [...]

[...] See the child Lisa until the age of 23. [...] Episode in 6th grade very important… very important year… See 5 years or number 5…I do not understand… A complete change of opinion in family group that did not work to your advantage… Perhaps 1947 or 1943…a disturbance…a connection with another child…initial F & perhaps M…something on an occasion beneath pine trees…& water… CM (?) the M. in Greenwich…1937 or 1938, another child, a male….

[...] An S and I believe G…you should understand…the initials and dates may not correspond…1947 especially important to you…the initials I gave apply either to one individual or first names of two…the second child something different now…February or initial F…a connection with second child…February or FB…I do not know which…a turnabout with the child…a complete change of plan or a turnabout…a 36 connection…someone perhaps 36 years old connected somehow with this. [...]

To a child, play and work are often one and the same thing, and parents can utilize imaginative games as a way of reinforcing ideas of health and vitality. When a child is ill-disposed or cranky, or has a headache, or another disorder that does not appear to be serious, parents can utilize this idea: have the child imagine that you are giving it a “better and better pill.” Have the child open its mouth while you place the imaginary pill on its tongue, or have the child imagine picking the pill up and placing it in its mouth. Then give the child a glass of water to wash the pill down, or have the child get the water for himself or herself. [...]

(4:05.) In other cases of a child’s illness, have the child play a healing game, in which he or she playfully imagines being completely healthy again, outdoors and playing; or have the youngster imagine a conversation with a friend, describing the illness as past and gone. [...]

[...] If your child believes that a particular illness is caused by a virus, then suggest a game in which the youngster imagines the virus to be a small bug that he or she triumphantly chases away with a broom, or sweeps out the door. Once a child gets the idea, the youngster will often make up his or her own game, that will prove most beneficial.

[...] Yet except for one time in a passionate moment she never had any urge to have a child. [...]

[...] After a woman bore, she nursed the child, taking it with her on food-gathering excursions, or sometimes letting other women in the group nurse the child. [...]

But a child born to two parents is also an offspring of the earth, its tissues as surely a part of earth as any tree or flower, or burst of ocean spray. A human child, true; but an offspring in which the entire history of the earth is involved — a new creation arising not just from two parents, but from the entire gestalt of nature, from which the parents themselves once emerged; a private yet public affair in which the physical elements of earth become individualized; in which psyche and earth cooperate in a birth that is human, and in other terms, divine.

[...] Biologically speaking, fetuses grow and develop — I am going slowly here because I am being tricky — and when innate consciousness merges with proper form, the conditions are right for the birth of a healthy child. When the conditions are not right, the child does not develop properly. [...]

[...] The family of the caveman was a far more “democratic” group than you suppose — men and women working side by side, children learning to hunt with both parents, women stopping to nurse a child along the way, the species standing apart from others because it was not ritualized in sexual behavior.

The child knew “that it came from somewhere else” — not by chance but by design. The child knew that in one way or another its most intimate thoughts, dreams, and gestures were as connected with the natural world as blades of grass are to a field. The child knew it was a unique and utterly original event or being that on the one hand was its own focus, and that on the other hand belonged to its own time and season. [...]

[...] To some extent or another, however, the child in you remembers a certain sense of mastery only half realized, of power nearly grasped, then seemingly lost forever — and a dimension of existence in which dreams quite literally came true. The child in you sensed more, of course: It sensed its own greater reality in another framework entirely, from which it had only lately emerged — yet with which it was intimately connected. [...]

[...] The child carries with him [or her] the impetus and supporting energy provided him at birth from Framework 2, and he knows intuitively that desires conducive to his development “happen” easier than those that are not. [...] The child is innately honest. [...]

Parents and physicians believe, instead, that the child is a victim, ill for no personal reason, but indisposed because of elements attacking him — either the outside environment, or [something] working against him from within. The child may be told: “You have a cold because you got your feet wet.” [...]

(“We will say then a small child. A connection with a small child.” Seth gave this answer to my request for the female child’s initials; Linda is thus eliminated definitely. More important, Jane said that when I asked questions concerning the child, she wanted to say Linda but that Seth wouldn’t let her. Backing off from the idea of Linda because she felt it was wrong, Jane compromised with the small child data.

We will say then a small child. A connection with a small child.

(“Some connections with a child here, and the color purple.” [...] This child reference is linked by Seth to the tension, and hence to Aunt Ella’s funeral.

[...] Seth gave the sex of the child in answer to my question, thus eliminating Loren’s son Doug, who was 13 at the time. Nor do we regard Linda as a child.

[...] When a child indulges in physical play, it exercises its muscles and its entire body. No one has to tell a child to play, for playing comes naturally. Playful games in childhood, not dictated by teachers or parents, often give clear indications of a child’s abilities and leanings. You can sense by watching a child’s play the future shape that his or her life can most productively take. The child does not consciously exercise his or her legs so that they will be strong, but simply joyfully follows the inner impulse to do so. [...]

[...] (Pause.) What you are dealing with, then, in creativity is a continuing kind of psychic play, an activity that probes into the nature of inner reality and explores it with as much sheer vitality as that with which the child explores physical reality. The child runs, falls down, skips, spins, climbs, swings, tries out its body in as many ways as possible, and naturally explores the body’s relationship with its environment. Then the child explores the environment itself. [...]

Beside this, the child, almost from its first moment of clear awareness, begins to play with its own consciousness, and in the same fashion. [...] Long before a child learns to place one playblock on top of another, it has already learned to mentally stack one thought upon another, so to speak.

(Long pause.) As a child, with no preconceived ideas in normal terms, you drew and wrote stories. [...]

(In addition the child knew it was not wanted, but had insisted upon being born. [...] The child was to cause its parents much trouble, but they were strong enough to cope with it.

[...] After Marilyn left Jane and I discovered that both of us had been alarmed by the child in some vague way; his actions had been quite overtly strong, we thought, involving such things as pretending to kill our cat Willy, taking swings at Jane and me, etc. [...]

(Toward the end of the session as Seth, Jane and I sat talking alone, after the departure of the Gallaghers, Seth volunteered the information that Scotty was a greedy child. [...]

[...] The child can stop at any time. [...] The child plays at being an adult, and is a child again when his parents call, so the effects of the game are not long-lasting. Still, they are an important part of a child’s daily life, and they affect the way he or she relates to others. [...]

Physical feedback is of course necessary for development, and a child deprived of it will not fully mature. Yet the development of dreams follows inner patterns that activate the child’s growth, and stimulate its development. [...] The child crawls and walks in dreams before those acts are physically executed — the dreams serving as impetus for muscular coordination and development.

[...] The young child dreaming of its own future counterpart, for example, attains a kind of psychological projection into the future of its world. [...]

[...] For some time the child is more secure there. [...]

These will reinforce the family group when the child most needs protection. This acquiescence to belief, then, is important in the early stages as infant develops into child. This sharing of mutual ideas not only protects the new offspring from dangers obvious to the parents; it also serves as a framework within which the child can grow.

[...] There is some information necessary to physical survival that must be taught and handed down from parent to child. [...] So it is necessary that the child accept beliefs from its parents.

[...] A child will cry when it is hurt. [...] But if the child discovers that a prolonged cry after the event gets extra attention and consideration, then it will begin to extend the emotion.

From the earliest stages the child automatically compares its interpretation of reality with its parents’. [...] While it is generally quite natural for the child to cry or feel “badly” when hurt, this inclination can be carried through belief to such an extent that prolonged feelings of desolation are adopted as definite behavior patterns.

The child will be completely absorbed in the merry-go-round ride that was directly experienced. [...] There will be some involvement, of course, as the child watches the images of the merry-go-round horses on the television station, while the story about another child’s visit to the playground will not take nearly as much of his interest.

[...] The same child might see the image of a merry-go-round on the television screen, or be told about another youngster’s visit to a playground, and a subsequent ride on a merry-go-round.

[...] Let the child be—I am certain she is a delightful child. [...] If I did talk to her, it would be in the dream state when she is not a child. [...]

[...] Allow the child freedom and allow yourself freedom. [...]

A certain amount of leeway in space and time lingers, for even biologically the child is innately equipped with a “forevision” that allows it some “unconscious” view of immediate future events that forewarn it, say, of danger. From this more plastic, looser experience, the child in dreams begins to choose more specific elements, and in so doing trains the senses themselves toward a more narrow sensitivity.

In periods of play the child actually often continues some games initiated quite naturally in the dream state. [...] In such a way the child juggles probabilities, and also brings his physical structure precisely into line with a given niche of probability. [...]

[...] The child may easily dream of being its own mother or father, sister or brother, the family dog, a fly, a soldier. In waking play the child will then try out those roles, and quickly see that they do not fit physical conditions.

[...] The uncoordinated child’s senses, for example, may actually hear words that will be spoken tomorrow, while seeing the person who will speak them today.

Now, a child is very dependent upon a parent. To the child a parent seems like God and, therefore, a child feels guilty, feels afraid that the parent will cast him out, particularly the mother, so the child then feels he will be completely abandoned. [...] He does not realize that what he actually feels is the early fear of the child of the parents’ abandonment. [...]

[...] You accepted, for example, the penances and so forth because as a child, given the idea of guilt, you wondered what punishment would befall you. [...]

[...] You were like a child with a new toy, and how could it be as good as you supposed and where was the hidden blemish, and so you have been looking for the hidden blemish. [...]

[...] You see, you are so convinced that you are guilty and you are so convinced that your ego is the most important part of you, when instead it is only the portion of yourselves that you focused upon as a child. [...]