“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In the old frame of reference he had to convince himself that his body could not move well, or fast. Then he did not need to deal with what he thought of as distracting elements—to leave his desk. Also, he could not travel too far inward without being drawn back to the body’s discomfort. [...] He found, in time, that the symptoms however were far more limiting than he had counted upon, and as his experience grew he found he needed less so-called “safeguards.”

[...] Ruburt wondered how far he should go in publicizing his work. [...] He discovered that he was a good speaker. He could go out into the world, but he didn’t want to. Your remarks about his telephone behavior often reinforce his feelings that he could not say “no” without the symptoms to back him up.

[...] The original reasons behind the condition have largely been taken care of, but he is left with physical beliefs about his body. [...] At one time Ruburt thought he should restrain himself. He learned to do this habitually. [...] He set up a bodily behavior pattern, however, and it had to be based on body beliefs.

(11:31.) The feeling of hopelessness resulted when he felt that perhaps he could not alter the pattern, that he had made his bed, as his mother used to say, and he must lie in it. [...]

[...] He told us he had watched the proceedings with much pleasure and amusement. He explained that Bill had allowed the hypnosis to proceed just so far before his ego called a halt, but that he could progress. [...]

[...] This does not mean that he will be consciously aware of future events, for if you remember these events can be changed by him at any time. He is constantly making his own experience. He is constantly forming the events of the past, even as he forms the events of the present and future.

[...] However he was not able to speak during either session, and came out of the state both times when Jane asked him to answer questions. He did succeed in relaxing very well. This is difficult for him to do; he has ulcers.

(When he first appeared John mentioned that he had attended a meeting for medical salesman in Cleveland OH earlier this month; John is a sales representative for Searle Drug. As soon as he mentioned Cleveland I asked him to say nothing more about it, in the event Seth chose to do so later. [...]

He felt he responded to people more emotionally, and so he took steps to see that artificial restraints were applied, so to speak, for those tendencies, he felt, could jeopardize not only his own work, but yours. And if that happened, he feared that you might retaliate, either by becoming ill, or by becoming eventually cool to him.

[...] The addition, however, brought with it a new sense of responsibility—not just to make money, but as his writings continued he wanted his creative work to be “responsible” and he began to discover that others, so it seemed, were all too ready to latch upon what he almost considered magical inspirational productions, and to follow them with very literal minds. [...]

[...] On the other hand, he should begin to definitely tell you when he is feeling better, when he feels releases, so that that new evidence can begin to more effectively take over from the old.

Though Ruburt was a good-looking young woman, with much vitality, he had no children, and indeed had been determined not to, for writing was the overwhelming interest in his life. He also needed love, however. [...]

[...] A few times he began to hiss and spit quite madly just before sessions. One night he really startled us. [...] Suddenly he ran out of the closet, fur on end, bolted through the living room, and hid behind the curtains. Once he nipped at my ankles as I was speaking for Seth, and in trance I dragged him half across the room while he hung on to the bottom of my slacks. [...]

In early spring Rob came down with several annoying gumboils and one night he asked Seth how he might get rid of them. [...] He made a few kindly but definite statements to the effect that we should know better, and suggested that the appliance be moved into the kitchen, where it would hold all our refrigerated food. If so, he assured Rob his gumboils would disappear.

In other words, I used to watch Seth like a hawk, particularly during the first year or so, but he always behaved intelligently, with dignity and humor. [...] He won my trust. He has given us excellent, psychologically sound advice, but he never tried to give us orders.

[...] He used to sit in it to take session notes and for a while it was the only chair in which he was comfortable. He no longer needed it when he recovered, and I got into the habit of using it. [...]

He will ultimately be of help to you in ways you do not now foresee. He is bungling and frightened but he waves brave banners. [...] He has not fulfilled his potentials, and he knows it, and so he tries to be self-important. But he means well. [...] He has not always been treated kindly by the psychics that he knows. In many ways he was shoved aside because he did not have the courage of his convictions earlier. [...]

[...] Crosson, not admitting it to himself, is afraid that he cannot hold an audience sufficiently and he wants help. He has been saying the same things over and over. He wants to be the one to introduce someone new, someone who will be known in the field, and added to his crown.

He needs inner initiation, new stirrings of his own (underlined) creativity. He also needs kindness. If you give him a hand he will be grateful and do his best to repay you. He is no longer precise.

[...] He also wants to make the path easier for Ruburt. He is pushing on purpose, for he thinks you are not businesslike-enough for your own good, on your own. [...]

(Long pause at 9:54.) Ideas of using considerable caution have been with him for that matter before the sessions began, when he recognized his own energy, the ease with which he could encounter people. As for example when he acted as a salesperson years ago, sometimes gathering small groups at the street corners in Florida. He learned to fear his own energy to some extent—or rather, he believed that he must be very cautious in its use. [...]

(10:12.) In other words, he felt he needed a countering force for his own spontaneity. He received some ideas of that nature from you in the past. [...] In that regard they were meant to show that he was as reasonable, orderly, critical and responsible as your notes certainly showed you to be. [...]

The books are different, however, while the poetry carries the more clearly recognizable stamp of his accepted identity, so he was afraid that I would lead people astray unwittingly perhaps, through the energy and power of our communications. That worry persisted, regardless of what kind of status he assigned to me. [...] But also how basically easy it was for his, say, Cézanne and James books also, for creatively he moved very quickly. [...]

(Long pause.) He felt it his duty to examine his psychic material with supercritical force, since it seemed to come from the other side of consciousness, so to speak, and since it presented such a different picture of all aspects of reality. [...] In a fashion they served as regulators that he felt at one time allowed him to live on an even course, tempering spontaneity or psychic exploration lest it progress too quickly for him to follow, yet also protecting him from other distractions so that he could continue his explorations. [...]

He has indeed now learned one of the most basic lessons of his life. Had he not learned it, there would have been further difficulties. [...] The notes he wrote should be faithfully read, as he intends each morning, for some time.

He has been going through such a time. He decided to make the journey. He is now returning, and he has learned much. [...]

He knows it now in the only real way it can be known. You learned it some time ago, and he knew it intellectually. He did not understand however that fear is not practical. [...]

[...] When a man is ill it is not necessarily because he wants to be ill subconsciously. It is not necessarily because he is receiving some hidden psychological benefit, or because the illness fulfills some need. He is ill often—always in fact—because of a distortion that is occurring within the self, and materialized in physical form.

He was indeed near death. He had severe heart disease. His circulatory system was affected, and he had breathing difficulties. He was 78. To that point, he had believed that his thoughts had no effect upon his body. He believed he could not get well. [...]

He decided to trust his body for the first time in his life, and to trust his mind. Almost overnight, relatively speaking, his heart regenerated, and two years later he ran the 26-mile marathon.

[...] Overnight—almost—he managed to completely change his picture of himself—and all of the physical evidence that before had confirmed his condition vanished. [...]

[...] Your thoughts about him to some extent also changed, and telepathically he becomes aware of that alteration.

[...] But more, he told me once again that he’d found no such tendencies on my part. “The man’s had no experience in the practice of psychology,” he said. “He’s only read textbook cases of this or that.” Then he told us that while the experience was unfortunate, perhaps it was best that we encountered it early in the game. Academic psychologists were apt to take a dim view of mediumship, he said. [...]

[...] Dr. Osis wrote that he wasn’t interested in the material itself, since it didn’t fall within his field of empirical psychology. He asked us not to send more unless it contained reports of ESP demonstrations. Even though he expressed interest in “testing” Seth for ESP, and suggested again that we try the clairvoyant experiment, I was put off by the letter. So I sulked: If he didn’t express interest in the material, which I thought was terrific, then he could just go find someone else to go looking through his walls!

[...] He’d had dealings with me before and knew me well enough to be personally interested. He wrote enthusiastic letters, but he was also worried about the book as it stood. My experiences proved that I’d been a medium all along without knowing it, he said, and this could invalidate the book’s premise—that the experiments would work for anyone to some extent, regardless of their psychic background.

[...] Why had Seth agreed when he knew, whoever he was, that I was scared stiff?

[...] He needed the rest from it, and had he gritted his teeth and plunged back into it, he could have fallen into old frameworks—but following his inclinations, as I told him, he avoided that, and when he begins it again it will be with the relaxed attitudes that his dreams and his newer understanding are teaching him.

[...] It is very important, again, that he follow his inclinations—for overall, when he feels like doing nothing but relaxing, this is what body and mind both need at that point. When he feels like motion, as tonight in the parking area, that is the correct thing to do. [...]

He should know this from the greater ease in getting in and out of his slacks, for example, and in getting up and down from chairs. [...] This time it is not a matter of doing as well as he can with bent arms and legs, but instead the work involves the correction of those difficulties to begin with. [...]

[...] He realizes now that the soreness vanishes quickly, a few days after a muscle is released, and that the soreness is a sign of the muscle’s vitality, newly regained. [...]

Gramacy was a psychologist and a magician, and he came to our house because he was a scientist looking for some real magic. He was a compact, dark-skinned and dark-haired person with soft brown large eyes that were kept half closed when he was being a psychologist, and turned larger, commanding and yet inviting when he was being a magician. Both his eyes and his hands were really too expressive for a scientist’s, and he tried to be a scientist even when he was being a magician — perhaps then most of all.

He turned on a small recorder; classical music with a tinny quality swirled through the room. He bowed his dark head for just a moment then lifted it, those soft eyes now … softer and harder at the same time; his hands moved in rhythm with the music; his whole body was a marvel of motion; shoulders, head, arms, chest — his whole trunk, responding to the music. Then at his command, four silver dollars disappeared through the tabletop and he caught them underneath in the palm of his hands. [...] He was in a trance of his own; so were Rob and I, watching. [...]

“Or that something will happen to me, that will prove that there is more to life than usual cause and effect,” he said to us. [...] It’s not in my bag of tricks,” he went on suggestively. [...]

He raised a furry eyebrow: “I’d still rather have some really great event happen. I mean, why not?” He grinned. [...]

He [Ruburt] was afraid that if he went too far he would discover that he had catapulted himself into a realm where both answers and questions were meaningless, and in which no sense was to be found. To do that is one thing, but to take others with you would be, he felt, unforgivable—and in the framework of those fears, as his work became better known he became even more cautious. [...]

[...] He [Ruburt] had a small experience of hearing a voice speak in his mind [yesterday]—a voice of comfort, all he remembered of quite legitimate assistance he received from other personalities connected with the French life, that came as a result of the French dream. [...]

He still needs your reassurances, and should tell you when he feels discouraged for his legs are further loosening, and all he needs is the revival of confidence. [...]

[...] Ruburt’s very early poetry offended Father Boyle, who objected to its themes, and who burned his books on the fall of Rome, so he had more than a hypothetical feeling about such issues. Many of those fears originated long before the sessions, of course, and before he realized that there was any alternative at all between, say, conventional religious beliefs and complete disbelief in any nature of divinity. [...]

[...] There, Ruburt was inside the image that he had projected. [...] In the first experience then Ruburt projected an image outward and his consciousness entered it, then he had a session by the same mechanics we always use. [...] He wanted to retain what was said, and sought for methods. He tried to have you take notes, but realized the physical incongruities. He became confused, tried to take notes himself as the listening image, and realized those notes would not exist physically either.

[...] In daily life this means that he finally understands that his negative feelings were methods that he chose to automatically keep the body in a certain condition. He can recognize, but not as before be engulfed by them. [...] You did not give it fully before because you were as unsure as he was. [...]

[...] (Yesterday afternoon, Sunday, August 10, 1975.) In a state between usual waking or sleeping he found himself giving a session such as this one, where earlier he had only heard my words in his head.

[...] He forgot what the session was about, remembering only one portion that seemed significant. [...] Following this in a period of usual activity (the same evening), he sensed his own image speaking for me and sitting across the couch from him in our (Seth’s) accustomed position. [...]

[...] Now, give us a moment—he much preferred leaving his body when he did. He was particularly frightened at the idea of living to an old age. He feared mental disability in old age. He wanted to be free of the body before that time was reached. Now in the two lives immediately previous he stayed with the body at one time until he was 87 and at another to the age of 92 and at a time when such age was quite unusual. He determined that in this life he would leave at the height of his powers and so he did. [...] It was a decision that he made. [...]

[...] The independence which you have been learning you chose as a challenge and he chose it out of love for you. [...] Now it is easy for me to say this, but you can be aware of it in your experience if you choose, but he has been watching out for you and many of the decisions you have made, including the purchase of your house, have been overseen by him though he encouraged you to make the decision on your own. There are other decisions you will also make and he will acquiesce in them and do not be so limiting in your ideas, he does not want that either. [...]

[...] He was a leader of a band of men and women. [...] At another time he was your daughter and you were the father. [...] He was interested in music and the piano. He was afraid for his fingers and his hands. [...]

[...] He was afraid I would raise my voice and he did not know whether or not the microphones would shatter and so I spoke quietly and decorously but it is difficult to show the vitality of consciousness when I have so few methods available without using the vocal cords in joyful abandon. [...]

He thought the clothing was on sale, that it was cheap at the price, but it only seemed so because he did not know that he had already paid for it. Here he found an excellent jacket which he realized was his own from a previous season. [...] It represented what will seem like a new ability to him, when he will shortly discover it in himself.

In his dream he is also aware that these people like him, and that in some manner he has been acquainted with them in the past. [...] They were images of the men whose voices spoke to him in his earlier dream, when he was so frightened; and when he leaped so gracefully from the banister, I was the one who extended an arm to assist him.

[...] He was blonde, a man I did not know. [...] He had a drawing board to which he had fastened a sheet of rough watercolor paper, and carried this around with him. I saw that he had covered the paper with fine-line figure drawings and portraits, in pencil and pen. [...]

[...] (Pause at 10:05.) He makes an evening visit to his office, and perhaps has coffee in the cafeteria. He speaks to a man in the hall outside the cafeteria. There is some confusion in his mind as to whether or not he can be with us in time, and his thoughts dwell on the matter.

A few moments earlier he vaguely caught an image, as his mind, picking up inner information, translated it: he was being led to a physician’s office in the image. [...] At last he was receiving some information and help from a level he had wondered about.

He is becoming more aware of inner events, so as he dozed he felt inner manipulations that were physical but not physical. [...]

[...] He is being healed, but with conscious cooperation, and relying upon the fact that you form your reality—not, for example, by simply accepting another framework of belief—but his dealing with the nature of beliefs themselves, and this is an achievement. It also means that he is “working alone,” in that there is no other healer or physician or system. He is working intimately with subjective and objective experience, correlating dream events and physical life.

[...] There is a connection of course between such inner manipulation and the actual physical body—so Ruburt felt physical sensation that was, however, not a part of what he thinks of as the body. [...]

The stool at the sink reminded Ruburt that he could indeed use the stool in other areas of the kitchen, so he thought of cooking, and to that extent his thoughts became more naturally attuned. He expected more motion of himself, even though walking specifically was not involved. That kind of stimulus, encouraged, and not forgotten or let go, will set up a new set of mental habits, and literally with no effort, as suddenly he finds enjoyment doing the dishes.

He should look over his clothes, for example, lay out his special ones, or whatever, so that he can begin to feel he is capable of choosing his own attire for the day. A small point, but important, that he started out the day with that kind of choice.

As Ruburt tries more physical activity even in the house, the creative abilities will automatically trigger certain processes so that he finds himself mentally concerned for example with what he will cook, or what cupboard he will wash, or whatever. [...]

[...] Driving now is good, for it represents one of Ruburt’s few connections with the natural outside world, and as he does improve, his impulses, natural impulses, will begin to show themselves. He will think of wanting to go into a restaurant you pass, or whatever, whether or not he can, say, at that moment.

[...] (Pause.) Concentration should not be upon feeling well enough in the morning to do something he wants to do. It should be upon the thing he wants to do, and away from the physical condition. When he feels his full enthusiasm bubbling up in his work he will not need to give himself suggestions that he will feel well in the morning.

He should put into the bedroom objects that have particular value for him. [...] But the bedroom is devoid of the favorite objects he keeps about him in this room. (The living room.) He feels that such objects are protective, and since he is without these he feels more vulnerable.

The inner self will see to it that he does. [...] When he focuses upon health itself as such, he overconcentrates. Health as a means to excellent performance in fields that are important to him; health as a means to use those abilities with which he has been honored; health as a means to bring joy to himself and hence to others; health as a source of strength that is available always to help him use those abilities and to fulfill his destiny here, now...

[...] He was frightened to some degree of the sudden reduction of tension. [...] He is used to being armed for battle. [...] In the past the reaction would have lasted much longer however, and considering that he had it at all, he did not succumb to anything like the same extent.

[...] At the same time he had not found himself yet where he wanted to go with his own career. He never thought of himself beyond the age of 30. In his dreams by then he would be a well-known writer, and that was the glorious end of the tale.

He wanted to join both Mattie and Dorothy. [...] He had been a woman, and Mattie a man. [...] For a good deal of this life, while loving her, he depended upon her for handouts, and refused to set himself up independently to point out the old relationship when he was forbidden independence.

When he felt trapped he adopted those symptoms, though to a much lesser degree, that his mother had when she was trapped. [...] This time he found himself in adulthood with no such “escape” in quotes offered or possible in the old terms.

All in all he surprised himself by his performance with your parents. [...] He simply would have run away, as he wanted to run away this time.

He did not think of what he lacked, but of what he wanted. [...] He wanted brilliant teeth (humorously) for the visit of your Aerofranz (Tam Mossman), and he gave a quick but direct message when he made the phone call, that an appointment would be available before your friend arrived.

Now this is a necessity: the Psycho-Cybernetics for at least fifteen minutes, no more than a half hour, in which time he allows his imagination full imaginative play, positive play, where he is writing well, enjoying his body, where his pursuits are succeeding. He does very well at this, but during this time have him concentrate on the imagination, and not give conscious suggestions to himself for he then becomes too heavy-handed.

If he reminds himself then he will have memory of some of these encounters, and this will be of help. [...] He should create the feeling within himself, and it will be physically materialized.

The added monthly count on his part was the offshoot of the work he has done thinking of abundance. [...] He did not overconcentrate, you see. He sent out the thoughts with full confidence, but in almost a playful manner, thinking merely of extra money.