“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] Pleas for help (directed to Jane as well as Seth) were seen as demands — not as opportunities to use abilities — so he felt hounded. He was not sure enough of his new world; he was still enough a part of the old one so that he often saw his life and abilities through the eyes of the “old world inhabitants” — the others who might scorn him, or set him up for ridicule.¹³ They represented portions of his own psyche still at that level of consciousness, not having quite assimilated the greater knowledge or experience, so he felt he needed protection — the protection that would … cleverly … serve all of his purposes, allowing him to go ahead as he wanted to … that would keep him at home working, and yet also serve as a control against too much inner spontaneity until he learned that he could indeed trust the new world of experience.

[...] He was convinced that it would take many hours of your time in order to translate perhaps a simple clear paragraph of what he was receiving. He experienced some strain, feeling that each vowel and syllable was so drawn out, in your terms of time, that he must either slow down his own neurological workings to try to make some suitable adjustments. He chose the latter. Messages, therefore, perceptions, “came through” at one speed, so to speak, and he managed to receive them while translating them into a more comfortable, neurologically familiar speed.

[...] Hanging up, he closed his eyes and imagined energy being sent out from a universal source through his own body, and directed toward the person in need. When he did so, Ruburt mentally saw a long “heavy” beam extending straight to the west from a point between his eyes. [...] He felt that this extension was composed of energy, and it seemed so strong that a person could walk upon it without difficulty. Subjectively he felt that this beam of energy reached its destination. [...]

What he was sensing, however, was an entirely different kind of reality. He was beginning to recognize another synapse [neuronal] pattern not “native”; he was familiarizing himself with perceptions at a different set of coordinate points. [...]

Besides normal reasons (Jane dictates:) he was psychically inclined, at a time when Jane was young and herself close to a past life. [...] He felt strongly but could not explain. In his solitary nature he came close to being a mystic but he was unable to relate his personality as Joseph Burdo with the social world at large, or even to the other members of his family. [...] He felt strongly his connection with the universe as a whole and with nature as he understood it. [...]

He responded to his own attraction for her and was able to expand in her direction because she was not an adult. He was essentially childlike in one manner and yet he had little use for most people. Had he lived to see Jane mature the feeling between them might well have dissipated. [...] Jane was 19.) He could not relate to another adult, and when in his eyes she joined the league of adulthood he would not have been able to retain his strong leaning toward her.

He never forgave his own children for growing up, nor did he forgive his wife for tending to earthly ways. Yet he related his own body, at least until the very end, very well with nature. He considered that he aged as a tree will age, but perversely he felt that others aged to spite him.

[...] As we laid the board aside she said, “He feels very affectionate tonight—I almost got a lump in my throat. He’s real sentimental. He’d go right on if we went back to the board, he’d go on for hours if we could stand it. He doesn’t want to quit.”

[...] There is one aspect here that I have not previously mentioned: Man was not allowed to play with the more dangerous toys until certain evidence was given that he had gained some control. This does not mean that he could not have destroyed the world he knew. [...] You do not give a child a loaded gun if you are certain he is going to shoot himself or his neighbor.

[...] He has gone beyond the child’s game. [...] He also learns by his successes, and there are times when he holds his hand, moments of deliberation, periods of creativity. [...]

[...] Each participator sensed the chaos to which he had direct access. (Emphatic.) He feared it even in his fascination, because he was bound to recognize that it would sweep him and his enemy into insanity or death.

[...] In another, he presents some new material on the “original planetary system,” and in answer to a friend’s question, he begins an explanation of the perception of a fetus. [...]

[...] Either he is getting weaker in position, is stepping out, or is dying. In any case he will be replaced by a man with white or whitish blonde hair—light hair, initially from the Midwest, and he may have an accent. He has heard of John, our Philip here, and met him at a meeting or conference, perhaps in 1964.

[...] He will want to know what is going on in his neighbor’s head so badly that he will realize he already knows. [...]

[...] The individual will find himself surrounded by more stimuli than he knows what to do with—but using this as impetus he will learn to handle it, using portions of the brain that now lie latent.

[...] The oversaturation of your atmosphere that will be brought about as a result of overpopulation, the increased psychic activity, the greater communications, will have the result further of pressing inward upon the individual until he is forced to find a new way to handle stimuli, and to respond to events.

[...] During it, Bill said he thought the information from Seth was sure to be pretty fragmented. [...] He told us the 7th century reference would be correct if the Vikings were to be involved, since, he said, this date in history finds Viking evidence in the Great Lakes to the west. As far as he knew, there is no record of Viking activity in this part of the northeast, in New York State.

[...] Then he added that in a certain location could be found bronze artifacts in the lake. [...] He also said these artifacts would date from either the 7th century, or the 17th century.

(Bill now told us that he waits until certain times of the year, when the silt clears up, to go diving. He knows that the formation of nitrogen is somehow related to the dying of algae in the lake, but could not explain it exactly to us.

[...] Before leaving, Bill told us how right Seth was about silt storms; he related a terrifying incident in which he had become involved in a silt storm, and lost his sense of orientation.

[...] He grunted and so forth in his sleep. You heard him, and wondered if he was perhaps in the bathroom and needed your help. The dream reflected your deep concern, and your fear that he might not make it, but get worse after all. [...]

[...] He still needs encouragement as far as relaxation is concerned, but he has turned the corner. [...]

[...] All in all, he felt that to be a fairly reliable and adequate framework, whether or not he might get better terms someplace else financially, or in other ways. He long ago settled upon you and his writing, however. [...]

[...] Much work is done when he is in bed. [...] He becomes frightened, for the reasons given in late sessions, and again, he can use as much reassurance as you can give him—as much understanding. [...]

[...] He felt threatened over the disagreements last year about contracts, about Tam’s frequent mention that he might leave. [...]

[...] He felt also that my ideas in Mass Events, and his ideas in God of Jane, were almost bound to bring about some controversy from the beginning—for reasons he largely worked out for himself—and they are related in his book. [...]

The individual therefore reacts to his interior environment or psychic environment in the same way that he reacts to his physical situation. And as he changes his physical situation through reacting to it, so he changes his interior or psychic situation as he reacts to it.

[...] If he is able to dream in such a manner that he can construct dream dramas in which he plays a dependent part, then the action is satisfied.

As a personality is molded by his exterior circumstances, so is he also molded by the dreams that he creates, and which help to form his interior or psychic environment. [...]

[...] He was discussing nightmares as far back as the 15th session, dream locations in the 44th session among others, the layers of the subconscious and dreams in the 92nd session. [...]

[...] He is in one room and I am in a hallway. [...] I keep talking to Rob and tell him to stay where he is. [...] They both talk, so I tell Rob to come into the hall so he can see what I see. He does, and both Robs see each other. [...]

(My friend was now either a miniature man, or very far away; actually I am quite sure he was miniature size. [...] He swooped down beside my bed, skidded along the top of a covered radiator, crashed into a wall and fell down onto another radiator top at a lower level. [...] I believe he was about four inches tall, and I saw his skis twisted over each other as he fell.

[...] He saw your form number two as described earlier, in which you were also traveling, you see. [...] When you appeared in form two he was conscious enough, you see, to recognize your arrival, and then to point out to you the dream image which he had already created. [...]

[...] He gave himself no suggestion beforehand, yet the overall suggestions that he has given himself stood him in good stead.

He would be a famous writer, on his own terms, (underlined) or he would not accept life joyfully. He would limit the ways in which life expressed itself through him, or at times he felt he would not operate at all. He would be a novelist and a poet, as the conditions of his happy existence, of his joyful existence, or he would not operate naturally.

He would attempt to limit his abilities if they did not agree with his preconceived ideas. If he could not go his own way, he would not go, and so he slowed himself down.

[...] “Boy, was he ever here,” she said, meaning Seth. “I felt like he had Pat pinned right to that couch.”

He learned, and he is still learning, and so your friend must learn. [...]

[...] He was very pleased with her progress. [...] “I’ve been getting good reports about you,” he told her. He also asked Jane about our insurance hassles. [...] He said it would take a major operation to restore the leg, with no guarantees that it could be done. A “minor” operation could fix the leg well enough so she could sit up, he said, after Jane said she wanted to start sitting up.

(Long pause.) The effect of those old negative beliefs, however, was stronger in Ruburt than in yourself, for he certainly thought at one time that if he curtailed physical motion people would not attack him for his amazing psychic and mental motion. The inhibition of physical motion obviously took place little by little, until he began to learn the truth — that human beings are meant to express all of their abilities, mental and physical, and that life is an arena of expression. [...]

[...] The negative part of Jeff’s information is that he said she couldn’t sit up until the leg was fixed to some degree, at least. [...] I wanted to ask Seth about the whole thing anyhow, since he’s said several times that she’ll be able to walk normally and with some confidence.

(Jane said Jeff was plainly surprised at her improvements, but that at the same time he was condemning her to staying in bed. I said that from his position he could do little else.

When man identified with the grandeur and energy of nature, then he knew nature’s reasons, for they were his own as well. He knew his death, his personal death, was only a transition, for his identification allowed him to feel the mobility of his consciousness, and allowed him to feel a sense of communion with the passing seasons, and with the ever-constant renewal of plants and fields. He did not need to look for a reason for nature’s destructive aspects, for he knew through experience the great sweep of its vitality. He knew no Gods were sending down vengeance.

[...] He identified with natural events. It is almost impossible in your time to describe man’s reality when he was consciously aware that he would die and yet not die, and when he was everywhere surrounded by those inner data of his psyche.

[...] Christ tried to tell men that he was everywhere, but they could not understand. He did not want a church, but an inner brotherhood. He was not born of a virgin, nor was his physical history any more factual than that once given for Zeus, or Apollo, or the Egyptian gods. [...]

[...] The scientist will see the affair as relatively neutral —an event, however, in which man is certainly a pawn, caught by chance in a catastrophe that he would otherwise most certainly avoid. [...]

[...] Otherwise it seems to him as if he is a physical failure in that regard. (Long pause.) He has not been as successful as he would wish — but even when fears brought about complications, the body has been successful in many ways in countering these.

[...] There were many questions he asked himself about his mother’s condition in particular (Marie is a bedridden arthritic), and about such situations in general, and he did indeed allow himself to go along on one level to provide an extraordinary impetus that he felt would be needed to conquer such extraordinary conditions.

The entire question is a deeply creative one, bringing about insights that he felt were highly vital. He felt himself adequate to the task. On the other hand, on the more usually understood human level, he also became extremely frightened.

(Another approach we want to try is to play the tape a friend had sent us several months ago — a reading by someone whom he considers gifted psychically. [...]

(Pause.) He can use also stimuli from you of suggestion and so forth, when momentarily he feels, at least, unable to rouse himself on his own behalf. That is, your invitation, your offer (long pause), is more important than, say, any implied or spoken accusation that implied he should (underlined) work or whatever at any given time. [...]

[...] His available energy is therefore directed to that activity, and with the thyroid still in a defective state, he feels then unaroused, lapses, and largely by such means (long pause) holds the energy that he has left. [...]

(A case in point: When he visited today, Mr. Wrigley said Jane should wear support stockings or bandages around her feet and legs in the daytime, to help reduce the swelling in her feet and ankles. Otherwise, he said, ulcers could develop there also. [...]

He does respond to stimuli rather well. [...] He has of course improved, and in general strength, since returning home—but in the hospital nothing was demanded or expected of him. [...]

[...] He saw himself as a woman — black. Last month he also saw himself as a Roman soldier aboard a slave ship. He previously had experience that convinced him that he was a man called Nebene.⁹ All of this could have been accepted quite easily in conventional terms of reincarnation, but Joseph felt that Nebene and the Roman soldier had existed during the same general time period, and he was not sure where to place the woman (but see Note 1).

[...] He may be kingly but poor, signifying the idea that wealth does not necessarily involve physical goods. He might at another time appear as a dictator, cruel and overbearing, where he would represent an entirely different framework of feeling and belief He might show himself as a young monarch, signaling a belief that “youth is king.” [...]

[...] He will follow it. He was not Nebene, or the Roman officer or the woman. Yet they are versions of what he is, and he is a version of what they “were,” and at certain levels each is aware of the others. [...]

[...] At 12:06 he presumably closed out the session, after remarking that I had access to as much energy as he did. [...] Then Jane told me that Seth could “continue forever” — whereupon he returned to touch upon Jane’s and my reincarnational “history” from another angle.)

John asked Seth if he knew who he, John, could get to type extra copies of the material. Seth told us that later Dr. Instream would help us out in this respect, although he didn’t know it yet. [...]

[...] He seemed in excellent spirits. John had never heard the loud Seth; the previous sessions he witnessed had all been quiet ones. [...]

[...] He asked Seth’s opinion concerning this plan. [...] These were met in his sales work, but would not be so easily satisfied if he were a proprietor of a settled establishment.

John also asked Seth if he knew what the trouble had been when John had had a pain in his throat on June 17,1964; on this date John witnessed the 63rd session. [...] He said John had cut his tongue on a bone sliver while eating, but because of the human nerve structure in that part of the anatomy the pain had been felt down in his neck.

I admit that for some mysterious reason of my own I let Bill Baker, as I’ll call that youngish individual, fool me when he knocked on our back-porch door yesterday afternoon. He was very well dressed and very well spoken, and I didn’t pay enough attention to the doubts I sensed when he told me about hearing voices in his head, and asked if Jane did the same thing with Seth. [...] He told her he’d been hospitalized several times for mental problems, and demonstrated his ability to speak very fluently a “nonsense” language he cannot decipher. [...] He described how he’s relating the Seth material to his sexual fantasies involving young girls, and detailed other instances in which he’d been strongly rebuffed when trying to physically actualize some of Seth’s ideas. [...]

He requires undue amounts of praise and attention from others, since he obviously will get little from himself. In a fashion, to an extent he will refuse to be accountable for his actions—therefore taking them out of the frame of judgment within which other people must operate. He then can avoid putting his “talents and superior abilities” to the test, where he feels he would certainly fail. He half realizes that the superior self and the debased self are both of psychological manufacture. [...] The belief in these highly contrasting elements of personality keep him in a state of turmoil, however, so that he feels powerless to act in any concerted fashion.

[...] As Seth remarked on August 6, when he gave his first session on the subject: “When Ruburt finished his project [God of Jane], he found himself with all of that time that was supposed to be used. He also became aware of his limitations, physically speaking: There was not much, it seemed, he could do but work, so he took the rational approach—and it says that to solve the problem you worry about it.”

“I can envision Seth’s material expanding almost endlessly just on a day-to-day basis, as he deals with events in the lives of Jane and me—and this idea conveys nothing about news of his reactions to and interactions with events on various levels of his own reality, plus other realities he may be able to reach. In Chapter 8 of Dreams, when I asked Seth what he was going to do for the rest of the evening (in our terms), he replied: ‘I am going to refresh myself by diving into some new concepts, for there are new concepts for me also, of course, and I dive into them from many positions all the time as well.’ (See the conclusion of Session 916 for May 14, 1980.) Think of the questions one could ask him relative to just this one statement! [...]

[...] In the 15th session for example he likened his state to the dream state of a physical individual. By the 24th session he was dealing with the problems involved in communicating with us. By the 63rd session he was explaining his state as energy not materialized into mass; this after telling us in the 54th session that Jane, Seth and I had been part of the same entity once; he could not tell us this earlier, he said, because Jane and I would have immediately jumped to the conclusion that he was part of Jane’s subconscious mind.

He can use it, use the knowledge obtained therein, learn from its mistakes, and advance. [...] From this he is free, but he is still somewhat bound by those events, though he may learn from them. According to Priestley, while the individual therefore is free from successive moments, he still does not have easily available, at fingertips so to speak, any information or realizations from time three. [...]

(Bill did have one experience in Puerto Rico, however, that he said might be called bizarre. He is quite sure he hasn’t had any other experience like it, and believes that if he hadn’t been somewhat familiar with these sessions that this one too would have escaped his notice; that is, he would not have followed it through.

[...] He has no idea as to how he was able to do this, or why he felt impelled to. After his first three correct calls he felt the ability wane, and began to make errors.

[...] Above all, Ruburt is not to worry, but instead he must resolutely shove such thoughts away whenever he is aware of them. [...]

[...] He tried today to imagine himself on the old Walnut Street Bridge, walking across it as he used to, carrying a sketchpad. [...]

[...] I hadn’t been home and he’d left a card on the porch floor; eventually I’d answered it. His rather long letter dealt with Dr. Childers’ nightshade diet for arthritis; the writer claimed he had a close friend who had recovered completely from rheumatoid arthritis that had plagued him since childhood, by following this diet—no potatoes, paprika [peppers], tomatoes, and a few other common foods of the nightshade family. [...]

[...] And Steve didn’t ask Jane if he could see me, so I didn’t hear from him. [...]

When Ruburt as an individual sought to heal himself, and at the same time sought to divest himself of traditional methods of healing, such as doctors and so forth, he embarked upon a journey through his own beliefs—but also through the beliefs of your own culture. He is coming out on the other side. Again, your discussion about the dentist was vital to him, because he finally understood his attitudes—not only in that area but others; and in those areas, no matter what he told himself, he was afraid that the worst was really happening, or would happen.

He really feared that in actuality he needed gum surgery, and at rock bottom he feared that that was a reality—against which he must fight. [...]

Postscript: certain conditions have already changed for Ruburt, so that he can express energy more exuberantly. He can collect it, and yet let it flow through him with greater strength.

[...] It seems not only as money taken from you, or from Ruburt, which annoys you more, since you think he worked so hard for it—but worst of all, the money is being spent to promote national stupidities of distorted beliefs, to which you are diametrically opposed.