“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Somehow the twice-yearly, north-and-south migrations of the geese have become symbols for me of the known and unknown qualities of life — sublime and indecipherable at the same time, enduring yet fleeting, and almost outside of the range of human events. For me, those migrations have become portents of the seasons and of the earth itself as it swings around “our” sun in great rhythms. The one consciousness (mine) stands in its body on the ground and looks up at the strange variations of itself represented by the geese. And wonders. In their own ways, do the geese wonder also? What kind of hidden interchanges between species take place at such times? If the question could he answered, would all of reality in its unending mystery lie revealed before us?

“The view of sky sweeping over our hill makes it much easier to see the great flights of geese heading south for the winter. Twice this week in the daytime, and once at night, large flocks have passed over. On each occasion I heard them while I was working inside the house, then rushed out into the yard. The geese seem to be more numerous on cloudy days and clear nights.

For in closing, I’d like to return to one of my favorite happenings: the migration of geese. I wrote the following notes in October 1975, some seven months after Jane and I had moved into our “new” house:

“One late-afternoon gaggle reached nearly from horizon to horizon, in three long and very noisy V-formations. And always, one bird led each V, with the two sides of the bird ‘lettering’ trailing back quite unevenly — wobbling, flexing, shifting. What free sociable claques, I thought. Amazing, the way their honking carried back to Jane and me as we stood in the driveway. We watched the geese fly toward the hills on the far side of the valley; we could still hear them even when they’d become practically invisible.”

(On September 25, 1972, the day of the 617th session in Chapter Three, I wrote a note describing how Jane and I had seen and heard geese flying south, in a spectacle both inscrutable and moving. Last night, we had reminders that a natural rhythmic cycle was completing itself six months later: As we retired I thought I heard the barking of geese migrating north, although Jane didn’t. I woke up around four a.m., though, and heard a flight clearly in the silent hour. [...]

(I caught my first actual sighting of geese just before dusk this evening. [...]

[...] Faintly, above the sound of the rain, I heard geese once more.)

Do you want to take a break and listen to your geese?

Yesterday morning I heard geese flying south for the first time this season, but they were invisible above a heavy overcast. [...] The geese looked very vulnerable against the massive roll of the earth beneath them, but this was an illusion: Like every other entity on earth, each one of those birds knew very well what it was doing. [...]

[...] Of course: The change of seasons meant that while I would be doing my own work on the book, the geese would be flying south. [...] Through the geese I want to associate Jane’s and my activities with nature rather than technology, for in nature I sense a great, sublime, ultimate peacefulness and creativity that far surpasses technology, can we but ever manage to approach an understanding of what nature really means for us physical creatures. [...] And my personal, symbolic way of trying to grasp a bit of nature’s ultimate mystery lies in my admiration for the twice-yearly flights of the geese.

(In chapters 3 and 12 of Personal Reality, I inserted notes describing how Jane and I had seen geese during their migrations south, then north, respectively, in 1972 and 1973. [...] For myself, I made intuitive connections between the regular travels of the geese and our own work rhythms in producing the Seth books.

[...] The geese came in low over the river half a block away, flying beneath the clouds and in the rain — a great wide “V” of them, heading north.

(I added that a great attraction here in recent years has been my ever-growing appreciation of the glimpses I get of the wildlife in the area, from the deer to the geese, rabbits, chipmunks, ‘coons, dogs, cats and what-have-you. [...]

[...] I didn’t see a rabbit, but I did hear a flight of geese approaching from the north above the cloud cover. And that growing cacophony, perhaps my favorite sound in all of nature, reminded me that I’d closed out Mass Events by writing about geese. [...]

[...] The barking of the geese started to fade. [...]

[...] The cicadas and the katydids still sounded their hypnotic rhythms, I’ve heard geese often lately, moving south in noisy waves, and we’ve had deer in our driveway several times. [...]

[...] [And wouldn’t you know it, I told Jane: My last paragraph for Mass Events is about the biannual migratory flights of the geese.]

The practical nature of his own dreams was also more apparent, for again, his dreams sent him precise visions as to where food might be located, for example, and for some centuries there were human migrations of a kind that now you see the geese make. [...]

[...] I leaned out of a window just in time to see a large formation of geese fly over, obviously southbound for the winter. [...]

[...] While we went over it this afternoon I became aware of a familiar, though infrequent, sound: the honking of geese. [...]

[...] It had been raining then, too, on that day last March — and as I wrote at the time, in some half-romantic fashion I’ve hooked up the flights of geese with Jane’s and my work on the Seth books. [...]

Some strange connection with him and geese. [...]

[...] As I lay beside her in a most pleasant daze, I heard quite clearly in the cool night air the honking of geese as they flew south. [...]