“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The circumstances surrounding Jane’s delivery of Seth’s Preface, while she was in trance, are given in the 685th session for February 25, 1974, in Section 1. After a break midway through the session, Seth began the material below at 10:57 P.M. He always indicates each word, phrase, or sentence to be underlined. This time he also called out each paragraph as he went along, and some of the other punctuation; to show Seth’s own sense of organization on such occasions, I’ve left a few of his instructions in place in the first three paragraphs.)

[...] Now he knows differently, but he still clings to the idea of one god, one self, and one body through which to express it.

[...] Jane Roberts’s husband, Robert Butts, wondered about the death of his mother (on November 19, 1973). In a session (the 679th for February 4, 1974) he brought out some old photographs. [...]

[...] He has at various times wondered about schizophrenia, for example. He does not realize that on this level, now, and regardless of my independence and other issues involved, that he creates the personalities free of time, organizes them under the leadership of the conscious mind, and assigns them tasks of great validity and importance, which are then carried out.

[...] As you know there are connections between us.²  He does not understand as yet the true nature of his own creativity. [...] In a different way so is Oversoul 7 as he thinks of it.

This is creativity of a most specialized nature and allows him to probe, if he will, into the nature of consciousness, the psyche, and creativity in a way that few can. Now he himself set up the conditions that would make such results possible. [...]

If Ruburt would regard his problems as challenges then he would get much better results. [...]

He is another aspect of me while being himself. (Pause.) In your terms, I am a guide he also follows. He is much more aware of our relationship however than you are of your relationship to him. [...]

[...] (Pause.) Because he is a part of my reality does not mean that he is less an individual. [...]

[...] (Pause.) He comes into your room with every reality but the physical.

(She said she remembered none of the material until “he” asked if we wanted to hear from Seth. [...]

His weight has stopped dropping, and he is now beginning to gain weight. Since, as I told you, he is now assimilating nourishment far better than he did earlier. [...]

His decision not to get weighed (some months ago) was a good one, and at the time it gave him some breathing space, so to speak, which he did use to advantage. He is now assimilating nourishment well enough so that the body can heal itself, and gain some weight besides. [...]

[...] He also visited her. [...] He looked at it and said any swelling was “due to the arthritis.” [...]

[...] He is doing much better than the doctor thought that he would, while often refusing to follow the conventional course of action that the good doctor advised. [...]

[...] “I sort of feel that once he comes through in the afternoon,” she said, “that he’s more or less available the rest of the time.” [...]

[...] Jane answered my question about whether Fred had any idea he was giving out rotten suggestions about arthritis by saying that it never occurred to him—or any other doctor. [...]

[...] When he gets panicky does he ever get panicky! He guards you like a mother hen, you egghead.

[...] In the past he has more or less translated this data automatically into a new camouflage pattern, in other words into a painting, without realizing that he had received any vision at all. [...]

I will have much to say about Ruburt’s family, whether he likes it or not. [...]

[...] He died in March, 1948, when Jane was 19.)

Now, it would have been far more beneficial had he been able to use that energy, keep it as a part of himself and transform it into a more constructive nature. [...] He could use it as a symbol to see how small it was in comparison to the whole inner self and how easy, therefore, it was to rid himself of it. He cried however because, you see, he realized that this was part of his priceless energy that he had expended, uselessly, and in the tears lay the lesson. [...]

[...] It allowed him to release aggression in a much less violent manner than he would have in the past. [...] The aggression that he feared was not so great and big and powerful and black and hairy and threatening as he thought. [...]

[...] First of all, the fish was a part of himself that he materialized within the dream state. [...]

I told him to give up cigarettes a long time ago, but it is his mark of independence that he is not letting any spirit tell him what to do. [...]

[...] Being away from the life to which he was accustomed, he could on his return see it more clearly, and appreciate it for what it is. [...]

[...] I asked if he could say a few words; she told me to get paper and pencil.)

“His ideas as he tried to explain them to you earlier this evening are excellent. They revive him psychologically, particularly with your help, as he discusses them. [...] It is important that he tells you when he does feel panicky. [...]

[...] In the first of the two he remarked that “Ruburt is still dealing with spin-off material following or resulting from his sinful-self data….” In the second one he stressed that although Jane was still afraid of spontaneous bodily relaxation, “[Ruburt] is safe, supported and protected—that is, of course, the message that he is trying to get through his head at this time.” [...]

10:01 P.M. Jane vaguely remembered Seth’s puzzling continuation of book work after he’d said dictation was over for the evening. I told her I thought he’d triggered his extra material himself through talking about our species’ couriers. I’m pleased that he said Jane is such a one. [...]

“He knows what I am referring to. [...] He did indeed become afraid of faith itself.

[...] He said Jane would not like the sleepwalking idea, which Jane confirmed later. He also told Marilyn Wilbur that he saw her, through Jane’s eyes, as an individual—a question Marilyn had raised earlier in the evening. In the past on various occasions Seth has said he usually sees witnesses, and myself, as a composite electromagnetic image that embodies our past, present and future, as well as these attributes in whatever other lives we might have had. He has explained that this is easier, usually, than focusing so sharply on the one physical and psychic personality in our temporal now.

[...] Since we are with friends, I will tell you that he remembered his womanly modesty even in his sleep, and he once more donned the clothes that he donned earlier, you see, when he let the cat in.

Ruburt was in the third form, and he did indeed project beyond your solar system. [...] He was given information which he did not recall consciously. [...]

[...] He was too lazy, you see, to rise from bed. He wanted to sleep. He had his cake and ate it too.

He has wondered about this. However, he does not have to worry ordinarily about beginning a session on the spur of the moment under the influence of too much drink. If he had truly that much, he simply would not be capable of a session, even if I were idiotic enough to agree to one. [...]

[...] Since, however, he has noticed that occasionally, without touching a drop of wine during a given session, he nevertheless feels as if he had been indulging, so I would like to make a brief explanation.

[...] There is however a distinction here which he is already beginning to recognize. It is simply that he becomes vulnerable, or more sensitive, to inner data in a dissociated state, regardless of what causes the state to come about.

[...] This stage is reached by Ruburt without such indulgence, and it is this state that he recognizes.

[...] He was the opener of doors. He had his picture taken with celebrities, and because he was “a religious man,” the establishment took it for granted that his aims and policies were good, and that he spoke for those who had no voice otherwise. [...]

He was, of course, a despot, and he did indeed set up his own alienated kingdom. [...]

(10:01.) When he is destructive, man does not seek to be destructive per se; but in a desire to achieve that which he thinks of as a particular goal that to him is good, he forgets to examine the goodness of his methods.

[...] Even his atrocities are committed in a distorted attempt to reach what he considers good goals. He fails often to achieve the goals, or even to understand how his very methods prevent their attainment.

He is indeed as blessed as the animals, however, and his failures are the results of his lack of understanding. He is directly faced with a far more complex conscious world than the other animals are, dealing particularly with symbols and ideas that are then projected outward into reality, where they are to be tested. [...]

[...] In so doing he contributes to a different kind of balance, of which he is usually unaware. [...]

I would like Ruburt to make a red star each time during the day he finds himself thinking pleasant or optimistic thoughts, and a large one each day or time he feels a strong surge of faith or exuberance. [...] He is not to count the negative thoughts, for that is not the kind of concentration we want.

When Ruburt feels blue he does of course show it, yet he is still worried that such moods will weaken your own faith, and the same applies to you. [...]

[...] She added that she hoped that in each session “he’ll just come up with something that I can use to blaze right through with, that’s all.” [...]

[...] She didn’t know where; but Ryerson told her that while over there he’d heard that Jane and I had bought a house in Spain and were moving over there. [...]

He anticipates scorn if he did so. He would indeed meet a large range of reactions. [...] He would meet honor, belief, respect, disbelief, anger, love—and some scorn. [...]

[...] I am pleased to see that he moves about in the chair more and more. [...] Those impulses quicken the physical changes, so that the two go together; as in the kitchen he now feels like standing, or wants to walk from the sink to the table.

[...] There is no need either, however, for him to imagine that he has any responsibility to go out into that mixed social arena to do tours or appear on television.

[...] During a call to Tam this morning, he advised Jane to “put a stop” to the affair before it went too far—to at least write the people involved a letter. [...]

[...] There he’s accepted as an independent spirit — a spirit guide by those with spiritualistic beliefs — or as some displaced portion of my own personality by the scientific community. [...]

While I was trying to define Seth that way and questioning whether or not he was a spirit guide, I was closed off to some extent from his greater reality, which exists in terms of vast imaginative and creative power that is bigger than the world of facts and can’t be contained in it. [...]

[...] Seth, then, is as much a fact as I am or you are, and in a strange way he straddles both worlds. [...]

[...] He stresses the individual’s capacity for conscious action, and provides excellent exercises designed to show each person how to apply these theories to any life situation.

[...] In color: I’d looked out the south window of the bedroom to see Fred Kardon standing out on the lawn; he was talking to someone else who was doing some kind of work near the big pine tree that grows up over the corner of the house. [...] Fred wore old work clothes—jeans and a sweat shirt, I think—and I could hear his voice clearly as he talked to the other person. [...]

[...] Dr. G looked at it, remarked that she had a large ulcer on the knee, and quickly left with Mary before Jane was quick enough to ask him what he was talking to the nurse about. [...]

(“Whom was he talking to outside the window?”)

He was talking to a portion of yourself—

[...] Instead, a distinction should be made: the child made an error — he lied — but he himself is not the error or the lie. He can then determine to change his behavior while still saving his self-respect.

[...] He endowed the nail with consciousness and self-awareness. [...]

(Just before supper I told Jane about my dream of last night, involving Bill Gallagher: He’d been a white-haired stage performer, and I looked down on him from a box seat in the loge of an intimate, dramatically-lit theater. [...] He stood helplessly on stage in the spotlight, wearing brightly colored stage clothes like a comedian might. [...] I believe that before this scene, he’d had another similar episode, where an accident had halted his performance and he’d ended up frustrated and confused, but I don’t remember it clearly enough to describe.)

[...] She fell rather heavily, he told us, and could have struck her head. He could not tell whether or not she hurt herself, but the vision has been on his mind since its occurrence. He wanted to know if Seth could help out here.)

[...] He did not cause the sensations. But in another way he was their cause, since you interpreted his existence in that particular manner. [...]

If the meeting takes place, and it is a probability, then he will be instrumental in arranging such a trip. [...]

[...] At first I had thought he referred to Dr. Colucci’s dental nurse. [...]