“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

This had to do with our chat, that he recalls as a dream. [...] He hinted at this when he told you that he was concentrating upon recovery.

[...] He would not have been able to take your mountain jaunts at all, earlier. [...] I have had others, but this was the first time he barely remembered.

[...] Now Ruburt, you may say, has done all the hard work leading to a recovery alone; but he has had help. [...] (Pause.) This was his primary battle, for he understood finally what the illness represented. [...]

Water itself, natural water, such as the pool, has healing qualities also that he was able to use. The change that he perceives in your apartment is, of course, the result of inner change for the better.

Psycho-Cybernetics worked well for a time, because at that stage the book served to break up body beliefs, though he hadn’t tackled the reasons behind them. He has already planned to reinstate suggestions I have given—he knows the ones, and this should be done immediately. They were dropped for several reasons, but mainly because he still did not understand that body beliefs were involved, and that these like the others could be changed.

Earlier, when this latest group of sessions began, he could not have played badminton, much less taken that trip. At the same time this expansion did put him in situations that he had avoided before, and so the contrast between his physical situation and that of others was apparent—and to him, frightening. [...]

Now: he is to do the point of power exactly as he decided yesterday. [...]

[...] (See Tam’s recent letter, in which he described his dream in which he saw Jane fully recovered, etc.) But still in your time and terms I tell you to follow faithfully what I have suggested.

As soon as break arrived, Bill announced that he had seen an image in the bathroom doorway. This is what he had been staring at the whole time. He asked for a sheet of paper and immediately set to work on a sketch of what he had seen. He is an artist and schoolteacher.

[...] Now I asked Bill exactly what he had seen. He said that the dark open bathroom doorway turned a foggy white. He then saw the form of Seth’s apparition stand out against this lighter background. The form was mainly a silhouette, Bill said, without strong detail, and yet during the first monologue he got a good look at the face. [...]

[...] For one thing, Rob was so busy taking notes that he didn’t really pay much attention to what was being said, beyond making sure he took Seth’s words down accurately. [...]

From my writing table at the right of the entrance to our bathroom, I could easily look at Bill as he sat in our Kennedy rocker, facing the bathroom entrance itself. [...] I just took it for granted that Seth’s remark about using Bill as a guinea pig meant that he was to be a topic of conversation.

The other [Saturday] evening while he was in bed Ruburt had a somewhat surprising experience. He was not dreaming. [...] He clearly heard my voice. [...] At the time words were clearly distinguishable, though later he forgot what they said. For an instant he was tempted to interpret the power as anger, for in your world when someone is shouting they are usually angry. He realized, however, that something else was involved. He did not sense my presence, but only heard the thunder of the voice. It shocked him because he is used to hearing my words from within his head — he had never before been aware of my voice as existing apart from him. In the dream state he has heard me giving him information. In these instances, however, he was the channel through which my voice came. He has often wondered about the nature of my own independence, and the kind of reality in which I exist.

If an inhabitant from another reality outside of your own physical system entirely were to visit it, and if “his” intelligence was roughly of the same degree as your own, he would still have to learn to focus his consciousness in the same way that you do, more or less, in order to perceive your world. He would have to alter his native focus and turn it in a direction that was foreign to him. In this way he could “pick up your station.”¹ There would be distortions, because even though he managed such manipulations he might not have the same kind of native physical structure as your own, of course, through which to receive and interpret those data his altered consciousness perceived.

[...] Now Ruburt called me originally (last Saturday night) at unconscious levels because he was upset with “earth programming.” He thought that you needed some help from the outside, so to speak. [...] I was not speaking to Ruburt personally when he heard me, but addressing myself to the world at large in a program that was indeed picked up by others.

[...] In certain ways man also projected outward the idea of a devil or devils, and for somewhat the same reasons, so that he could identify with what he thought of as the unsavory portions of the psyche as he understood them at any given time. [...]

He has had many experiences in which he glimpsed momentarily the rich otherness within physical reality. He has known heightened perceptions of a unique nature. Never before, however, has he stepped firmly, while awake, into another level of reality, where he allowed himself to sense the continual vivid connection between worlds. He hid his own purpose from himself, as many of you do. At the same time he was pursuing it, of course, as all of you are working toward your own goals.

[...] In the waking state he is able, now, to alter the direction of his focus precisely enough to bring about a condition in which he perceives both realities simultaneously. He is just beginning, so as yet he is only occasionally conscious of that other experience. He is, however, aware of it now in the back of his mind more or less constantly. It does not intrude upon the world that he knows, but enriches it.

He first saw this library from the inside last Wednesday. He was simultaneously himself here in this living room, watching the image of himself in a library room, and he was the self in the library. [...] Before him he saw a wall of books, and the self in the living room suddenly knew that his purpose here in this reality was to re-create some of those books. He knew that he was working at both levels. [...]

“He [Ruburt-Jane] has an ability to identify with others, and communicate. He has always been mentally quick and intellectually agile. As a youngster he received the messages from others so quickly that he was diagnosed as having an overactive thyroid gland. Actually, he was receiving “unofficial” messages that are usually neurologically censored. He could not allow them to become conscious in that world….”

In the light of this discussion, now, that self was as unrealistic at its end of the spectrum as the Sinful Self was at the other, for Ruburt felt that he was supposed to demonstrate a certain kind of superhuman feat, not only managing on occasion to uncover glimpses of man’s greater abilities, but to demonstrate these competently at the drop of a hat, willingly at the request of others. At the same time he believed he was the Sinful Self, and that expression was highly dangerous—so between those two frameworks, the psychological organization, he operated as best he could, still seeking toward the natural value fulfillment that was his natural heritage. [...]

(Long pause.) He acted toward her according to his own understanding the best that he could. He does not need to punish himself in any way for any actions or any omissions in that relationship. This does not mean he could not have acted better in any particular instance, perhaps, for that can be said about almost anyone. [...]

(Long pause at 9:48.) As he became better known, so it seemed greater demands were put upon him. Another image of the self comes into consideration, so that it seems to him that he is expected to be nearly a saintly self—or at least that he is regarded as someone who is expected to perform in an altogether superlative fashion. [...]

(Long pause.) The superself image itself seemed to condemn him, of course, since he felt he could not live up to it—and therefore along the line somewhere both the superself and the Sinful Self became in their ways joined, or at least allied. Through all of that Ruburt of course looked for further creative developments and intuitive breakthroughs, for, again, he needed more room. [...]

“He knows of your hypothetical existence,” Seth said. “He believes that he has a probable self, and he is endeavoring to visit this probable universe. He has no idea, however, that you might be expecting such a visit, or that you might be planning to meet him. … He has been working on the drug himself, along with two others.

“I’m ready,” Rob said; and he was. Over the next few weeks he did psychological time exercises suggested by Seth, and tried to be intuitively alert to anything out of the ordinary. [...] He is an older man in his system of reality than Rob is in ours, and while he is engrossed in his painting, this interest is subordinated to his medical work.

[...] A few years ago he did some medical artwork and was amazed at his proficiency at it, and with the medical procedures and terminology, which were quite unfamiliar to him when he began. Each of Rob’s sketches and paintings won prizes for the doctors for whom he did them. [...]

“He will be able to manipulate in his own system while he is gone. Your state of mind and receptivity will be communicated to him and serve as a beckoning area that he will recognize. [...]

[...] He believed in an idealized good, while believing most firmly and simultaneously that man was fatally flawed (loudly), filled with evil, more naturally given to bad rather than good intent. He believed in the absolute necessity of power, while convinced at the same time that he did not possess it; and further, he believed that in the most basic terms the individual was powerless to alter the devastating march of evil and corruption that he saw within the country, and in all the other countries of the world. No matter how much power he achieved, it seemed to him that others had more — other people, other groups, other countries — but their power he saw as evil. For while he believed in the existence of an idealized good, he felt that the wicked were powerful and the good were weak and without vigor.

[...] (Pause.) Your President at that time, however, had at his command vast information, so that he was aware of many groups and organizations that did not agree with his policies. He used those as in other circumstances a paranoid might use the sight of a police car to convince himself that he was being pursued by the police, or the FBI or whatever. The President felt threatened — and not only personally threatened, for he felt that the good for which he stood in his own mind was in peril (intently). [...]

(8:38.) He concentrated upon the vast gulf that seemed to separate the idealized good and the practical, ever-pervading corruption that in his eyes grew by leaps and bounds. He saw himself as just. Those who did not agree with him, he saw as moral enemies. Eventually it seemed to him that he was surrounded by the corrupt, and that any means at his disposal was justified to bring down those who would threaten the presidency or the state.

[...] More often than not he was quite amused as he gave them to her. [...]

[...] He has abilities that he uses. He realizes that from me he gets information that he would not otherwise possess and he can be here in a moment.

He was there and he wanted to reassure you. He wanted to let you know that he still existed but your fear prevented you from seeing him. [...]

[...] Now you could not for he is resting and he deserves it—but it was your fear that prevented your receiving the proof of the immortality of his personality. [...] He was trying to tell you that he was free and to do it by a characteristic gesture that you would understand. [...]

[...] Ruburt, though he does not know this yet consciously, is also in another class in another dimension of reality—for I teach him while he is asleep. He does not talk back that way. [...]

On that particular occasion he was, contrary to appearances, quite open to suggestion because he was off guard. [...] And in some respects he is good for you. [...] He stretches you, both your sympathies and your understanding, and you both benefit.

He went first however because he will die shortly before you, and incidentally in many years to come, and not at a young age. He will live to old age, particularly to compensate for an early death in a past existence.

The waterfall represented physical death on this level, you see, both of you dying, your brother and yourself; but he first and already adopting the birth position, for he will choose another life rather quickly. He is impulsively drawn to things of earth.

[...] This evening he surprised Jane and me by telling us he was not seeing the girl anymore. [...]

He lost his own wife, and was left with a highly neurotic and completely crippled daughter, for whom he cared for many years. [...] He resented the girl, and while he cared for her he did not do so kindly.

[...] The daughter had left too late; he was too old. [...] He had no one now to talk to, and he hated his daughter the more, and railed that she had forsaken him in his old age, after he had cared for her through the long years.

This time he plays that part and is completely immersed in it. [...] In the past he hated the man who took away the daughter.

[...] There are other personal problems on John’s part, which he must work out in any case. He knows what these are.

[...] He was busily tracing these out as he aged—he’s now 74—in order to prove out his own theory of aging and senility, about which he’s evidently written extensively. He makes no reference in his writing to the part the negative suggestions he constantly gives himself may have to do with his growing forgetful state—rather amazing, we’d say. The man is regarded as a leading authority, unfortunately; we wonder how many students he’s inculcated with the same negative thinking over the years of his teaching career. [...]

He was not upset in that regard. He was upset with Prentice on some other matters, and then began to worry that “Unknown” might be too long — might run into difficulties. Tam likes to please, so often he runs into problems if he tries to please too many people at once.

Anonymously, he visited many homes, and saw the dissatisfactions, the panics, the difficulties that he knew no cosmetics could remedy.

[...] He is very cleverly trying to appeal to the misdirected good intent of Sadat and Begin, and by doing so to redirect the policies of the world. At the same time he must deal with the chicanery of politics itself, and the face-saving devices known so well to religion and politics both.

[...] Many of these Ruburt has now come to, and others he is nearly upon. [...] Tell Ruburt to think of health like money, and he will have much of it, for in that area he is clear now. [...]

In that area he can use your leadership. [...] Do not withhold your leadership in that direction therefore, but give it gladly, as he can give it gladly in those areas where he is now growing proficient.

[...] But where he is tentative he can use your leadership, as where you are tentative you can use his.

[...] He was our guest from last Friday, September 8 to Sunday, September 10. He said the material was “fantastic.” [...]

He quite understands the overall creative triumph. It is only when he tries to become overly literal that he becomes overly concerned with time. He has also reacted to your own doubts and fears about the book, and has picked up often your own ambiguity in that regard. Had he really been so against the idea of the book being produced as it was, he would have said so indeed.

Ruburt believes he should be a TV personality, a healer, a writer, an excellent psychic versed in all of the most esoteric traditions, a magnetic personality. He believes he should be objectively intellectual, cool and calm, and spontaneous at the same time. He should be in glowing health—glowing—and shine amid the multitude. [...]

[...] Ruburt does not feel he can properly see his way out. [...] Ruburt should stop telling himself that he does not want to see people. He may not want to have visitors at times. On other occasions he enjoys spontaneous encounters. [...]

Beyond that, however, is the fact that you allow yourselves, and he allows himself, no rest. [...] So you can imagine how he is reminded of it with each step.

[...] Ruburt had some habits he was only vaguely aware of. He used to close his eyes tightly, often, when he sat down, tensing the knee ligaments and the eyes at the same time. [...] In another learned response he did not look sideways. When he reached for something to the side he reached like this: his eyes did not follow the motion.

In other ways he did not use his eyes to follow sideward motions, and often tensed the entire head area when he executed any movement he felt was difficult. [...]

[...] He will be reading fairly well, then perhaps look up at the television set, following motion of the screen, and then it will take time again—a few moments, perhaps before he reads well again. Or he will be reading well and look up, eyes roaming about the room, and then become disoriented visually.

Again, the more normal activities, as with the dishes, et cetera, that Ruburt tries, the more he states his intent to do normal things. The more his attitude changes, the more flexible he becomes, the more freedom he allows himself. [...]

He needs a particular psychological balance. On the one hand, he must not be impatient. On the other, he must not let ideas about time and the body impede him. Frank has been of great help, because he can physically deduce the changes that are occurring, so offering “physical evidence.” Yet Frank believes that muscles can only operate in a certain way in time, and he supposes that certain improvements must therefore take so much time. [...]

You have been of great help, more now than ever, for he needs your encouraging assessment that he is physically attractive, that he is not alone but has you to discuss these issues with. [...] He is ready for another leap in understanding, that brings him to another “higher” point.

[...] He passed an important plateau of beliefs that has led him to definite physical improvements. [...] He now had to put them together—that is, he is in the process of putting the new beliefs together, coordinating them.

[...] Certainly a connection with all of this is the call Jane received from Andrija Puharich a few days ago; he wanted her to see what she could get about physics; he’d been to a meeting of physicists at Princeton University, Wheeler’s home base; he’d given Jane the names of some well-known physicists who were interested in what psychics could get, but she hadn’t remembered any names.)

That is the self he should refer himself to. He does not need discipline as he thinks of it. He likes a change of pace, alterations in schedule—changing his hours, for example—two or three times a year, works well for him when he allows it.

[...] He forgets his natural contours of mind and spirit when he hassles himself about time or hours, for his particular kind of creativity works in a different fashion. [...]

[...] It would have hurt nothing for him to get up, and he would have done some creative work besides. [...]

[...] He then threw out the God concept as a question for general discussion. He was greeted with a large silence momentarily. Seth asked for ideas from Bill and Peg; it will be remembered that in past sessions he said he would go into this question when they witnessed sessions.

Through the woman at Duke our Jesuit picked up inner information which he has given to Ruburt... Ruburt doesn’t know he has received it... The Jesuit doesn’t know he has given it. [...]

[...] He said the four of us would embark “on excellent circumstances” this winter but did not elaborate. Seth told Bill that he took his problems with him on vacation, especially the ulcer, and Bill heartily agreed. [...] Bill showed us his Japanese “tranquilizer,” a small black wooden carving he had bought in Puerto Rico.

[...] He stressed many times that the situations he foresaw were not drastic or alarming in any great degree, and that Peg could handle them. [...] The remarks Seth made about this were to the effect that had we asked specifically about potential dangers the Gallaghers might encounter on their trip, he could have given warnings. [...]

[...] He felt that nature expressed for him the vast power of his own emotions. He projected himself out into nature, into the heavens, and imagined there were great personified forms that later turned into the gods of Olympus, for example. He was also aware of the life-force within nature’s smallest parts, however, and before sense data became so standardized he perceived his own version of those individualized consciousnesses which much later became the elementals, or small spirits. But above all he was aware of nature’s source.

He was filled with wonder as his own consciousness ever-newly came into being. He had not yet covered over that process with the kind of smooth continuity that your own consciousness has now achieved — so when he thought a thought he was filled with curiosity: Where had it come from? [...]

The imagination has always dealt with creativity, and as man began to settle upon a kind of consciousness that dealt with cause and effect, he no longer physically perceived the products of his imagination directly in the old manner. He realized in those earlier times that illness, for instance, was initially as much the result of the imagination as health was, for he experienced far more directly the brilliant character of his own imagination. [...]

[...] He seeks them out, for emotionally he understands quite well their part in his own private life, and their necessity on a physical level. [...]

[...] Ruburt’s dream about the reincarnational room told him that he had decided to concentrate in each life rather exclusively upon certain issues. He decided not to be distracted even by the public, or by public issues. He does not need, therefore, to have symptoms to force himself to stay at home. He does not need to fear that he will be distracted. He does not need those extra precautions.

The dream meant, also, that he was not alone in a different fashion, for the self that he knows is supported by strong and vigorous other portions of the psyche, and other aspects all ready to help him—inner friends he can count upon.

The next, psychic family dream represented an actual reunion of some Sumari family members, so that Ruburt would not feel so alone, but realize he did indeed have rich emotional connections with others, at other levels, and that he was part of a family of creative initiators, full of energy and vigor, who could go out into the world or cheerfully forget it if they chose.

[...] If he told you to slay your son upon a mountaintop, then it was up to you to obey, and to your son to acquiesce. [...]