“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now there are books programming out-of-body activity; millions of you are told that when you leave your body you will meet this demon or that demon, or this or that angry god. So, instead, we will form a free city to which those travelers can come, and where those who enter can read books about Buddhism if they prefer, or play at being Catholic. There will also be certain beloved traps set about the city, that will be of an enlightening nature … Now listen: You think there is nothing intrinsically impossible about building a platform in [your] space … I am suggesting, then, a platform in inner reality. It is as valid — far more valid — as an orbiting city in the sky, in physical terms, and it challenges your creative abilities much more. You need a good challenge — it is fun! Not because you should do it, but because you desire it … It is a great creative challenge that you can throw down to yourselves from your future selves.

1. “You can colonize an entire inner level of reality,” Seth told that October 1st class. “To do so, you must give your best with dedication and joyful creativity. This will not be an imaginary city. It will have a greater reality than any physical city that you know, and it can, in its own way, shine with brighter lights in inner reality than any nighttime city displays. There, I hope, you will work at developing skills, in terms of the dream-art scientist (for instance; see Session 700 in Volume 1 of ‘Unknown’ Reality), and learn other professions than the ones you now know.”

I feel no great responsibility for any of your beings. [If I did] then I would be denying you your own power, and therefore seemingly building my own … I am here because I enjoy it. I am a teacher, and because I am a teacher I love to teach. A person who loves to teach needs people who love to learn. That is why I am here and why you are here … My view of reality is different from your own, and that is fine, and so I can teach. A true teacher allows you to learn from yourself. I enjoy the great vitality and exuberance of your reality, and our city will have joy and exuberance. Now joy sounds quite acceptable, but (with amusement) our city will also have fun — which in many spiritual circles is not so acceptable!

(In that class session Seth had much more to say about the dream city. Because of the individual freedom of creation implied in the city’s very existence, and in Jane’s early poem in Note 2, I’ll close this appendix with another of her verses. This one is from an even earlier poem, Lorrylo, written when she was but 15 years old:)

[...] On August 9, Wednesday, Jane was invited by telephone to appear on the Burke TV show in New York City. On the evening of August 15, Tuesday, Jane and I were having supper at an outdoor restaurant, The Californian, at 7th Avenue and Broadway in New York City. [...]

[...] In capsule form: The data given in connection with a Boston trip, with New York City not heard from yet by us; yet events during the New York City trip, a couple of days after the Boston trip, bear a close resemblance to the data. [...]

(The brief session was held in the office of Jane’s publisher, Frederick Fell, in New York City. [...]

(Merle did not know we were eating there, but did know we were in New York City, having been so informed by phone by his wife, with whom I work in Elmira. [...]

City.

(“What city?”)

(“Near what city or town?”

(“What was the name of this city?”)

[...] Now all of you this evening tell yourselves you will have a true dream from the Gates of Horn and we do have a City building. A City. [...] A City that does indeed exist mentally. [...] And someday, that City might exist physically. [...]

(Rick talked about a suggestion for a dream from the Gates of Horn, and that he felt his dream had related to the City. [...]

(Dickie was discussing Seth’s remarks on the inner City when he noticed Seth’s return.

[...] And when this City is physically constructed, you will be as dead or as alive as I am.

(“The vicinity of another city”, was a reference, Jane said, to the fact that Dr. Colucci lives in Pine City. Pine City is one of those small suburban communities that border more populated places like Elmira; though their population is small they actually cover many more square miles of land.

That did indeed refer to Pine City, and connected, you see, the office incident of your appointment with the car incident, which occurred in the vicinity of Pine City.

[...] The vicinity of another city, and also a connection with an accomplishment.

[...] [Ruburt thinks of Frederick Fell, in parenthesis.]” We agreed this data probably referred to Jane’s publisher in New York City.

[...] If you were from a foreign land and asked one person to give you a description of New York City, you might take his or her description for reality. The person might say “New York City is a frightful place in which crime is rampant, gangs roam the streets, murders and rapes are the norm, and people are not only impolite but ready to attack you at a moment’s notice. [...] If you asked someone else, this individual might say instead: “New York City has the finest of museums, open-air concerts in some of the parks, fine sculpture, theater, and probably the greatest collection of books outside of the Vatican. [...] Their descriptions would vary because of their private beliefs, and would be colored by the individual focus from which each of them viewed that city.

One person might be able to give you the city’s precise location in terms of latitude and longitude. The other might have no such knowledge, and say instead: “I take a plane at such-and-such a place, at such-and-such a time, giving New York City as my destination, and if I take the proper plane I always arrive there.”

Now if you read such books you may often program your activity along those lines, in the same way that a visitor to New York City might program experience of the city in terms of what he or she had been told existed there.

[...] All of the reunion participants live in the New York City and New Jersey area just across the Hudson River. In his letter Wendell does not name the town or city in which the reunion, at a restaurant, took place, but from following data Jane and I surmise it took place in New York City.

[...] The envelope object is postmarked Ridgewood, NJ, which lies on the outer rim of the commuter towns attendant to New York City. The letter the object contained, however, was written by Wendell at his home in Edgewater, NJ, which is just across the Hudson from New York City. [...]

[...] Driving into New York City by tunnel from New Jersey, I remember a long curving tunnel lit by strings of lights. [...] If he drove to New York City by private car, he would presumably head south and take the first tunnel he met—the Lincoln.

[...] In any traveling Wendell might have done from his home in Edgewater, NJ, to New York City, trains and cars could very well have been involved.

[...] Not once but several times, and in various peripheries enclosing various portions of that ancient site: the old city, the new city, the upper and lower cities, and so forth. Aerial photos show that now, at least, there’s more than one southeastern corner of the city formed as the battlemented, meandering southern wall turns north in a series of steps or right angles. [...]

[...] I ‘knew’ that the tower I faced marked the southeastern corner of Jerusalem, and I ‘knew’ that the wall itself was an enormous fortification that had surrounded that ancient city sometime during the first half of the first century A.D.

[...] I don’t know whether or not the city had a wall surrounding it earlier in that century, but assume it did.³

“There was something very contradictory about the affair: The soldier-self I saw atop the tower was a Roman — whereas, according to the little I know of those times, such a position should have been occupied by a native Jew, who was perhaps a lookout for the city behind him. [...]

[...] There was a city in a jungle — M-E-S-S-I-N-I (spelled) as nearly as I can translate it. [...] A new city was built which in its turn also disappeared. [...]

(While we were talking about the city of Messini, about which none of us knew anything, Seth returned briefly):

[...] It is another city. [...]

[...] They were, in those terms, the original cavemen, and they came out from their cities through caves also. [...] They were often doorways to and from the cities of the Lumanians. Long after the cities were deserted, the following natives, uncivilized, found these caves and the openings.

Large groups, however, simply left their cities, destroyed the force fields that had enclosed them, and joined the many groups of relatively uncivilized peoples, mating with them and bearing children. [...]

In the period that you now think of as the Stone Age, the men you think of as your ancestors, the cavemen, often found shelter not in rough naturally formed caves, but in mechanically created channels that reached behind them, and in the deserted cities in which once the Lumanians dwelled. [...]

[...] And with shapes that appear like high buildings or a skyline of a city.

I have the impression here of a large office in a building in a large city, like New York. [...]

[...] The city was Baltimore. [...]

[...] Other impressions also apply to the same circumstances—the city, Baltimore. [...]

[...] The disturbed person may immediately begin a long tirade, describing previous episodes in which he or she was hunted from city to city. [...]

[...] There was movement of the middle class from the city proper into the suburbs, with a change in the tax balance, and the city merchants began to suffer. [...]

[...] The young and the old, the conventional and the unconventional, had small skirmishes, where some of the city fathers objected to the long-haired youths in a city park — quite trivial incidents, and yet indicative of splits of values and misunderstandings between the generations.

[...] The better off sat at city councils, however, and the displaced poor were not able to afford the new structures. [...]

[...] City government was suddenly confronted with a reality that had little to do with conference rooms. [...]

[...] City? [...]

(Again Bill was passing a note to me: What city? [...]

(“What city or territory in Australia is the relative located in?”

(This question was inspired by Bill’s note re city, country, territory, etc. [...]

[...] Involved in pursuits that took him from city to city and to town to town. [...]

Decision will be made in another city, not Chicago, that will reach into this state, concerning of course your godly company (again humorously), to which you have taken such a pledge of allegiance. [...]

(Bill and Peggy Gallagher are on vacation in New York City this week and Seth was to give data concerning them during the session this evening. [...]

(See the 360th session for August 16, 1967, held in F. Fell’s New York City office.

[...] A couple of weeks after our return from New York City, Fred wrote Jane a glowing letter.)

[...] The garage that services it said it was unsafe to be used outside the city limits, for fear of breakdown, etc.

[...] On a nighttime street in a city, maybe New York, a shot rings out. [...]

[...] Rich and poor alike walk down the same city streets. The same street does not suddenly become gold beneath the foot of the rich man and woman—and potholes in city, state, or government roads are felt alike by the tires of the Cadillac and the lowly Volkswagen.

When you were a young man in New York City, bringing in the cash, you paid your taxes without a qualm. [...]

(A note by R.F.B.: Jane had formally ended her ESP classes by March 1975, when we moved from our downtown apartments in Elmira, New York, to the hill house at the edge of the city. [...]

[...] You look upon your cultural world with its art and manufacture, its cities, technology, and the cultivated use of the intellectual mind. [...]

[...] Their products are the seas upon which you sail your ships, the skies through which your airplanes fly, the land upon which your cities sprawl, and the very reality that makes your culture, or any culture, possible.

Cities, therefore, existed in dreams before the time of tribes. [...]