“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] He would feel the experience of being anything he chose within his field of notice: people, insects, blades of grass. He would not lose consciousness of who he was, but would perceive these sensations somewhat in the same way that you now feel heat and cold.”

[...] “You are an identity,” he said. [...]

[...] He said in another class session: “You have more than one conscious mind. [...]

[...] He says: “When you look into yourself, the very effort involved extends the limitations of your consciousness, expands it, and allows the egotistical self to use abilities that it often does not realize it possesses.”

Such an accident would occur in a period of exuberance, rather than for example when he was driving in connection with his duties at work. In letting down, there is the danger that he would let down too far, forgetting caution.

[...] I don’t recall if he wears rings; but if not then the ring finger would be hurt, particularly. [...]

(“Some dim connection now with Tom Page, as if he’s writing the story. [...]

[...] The accident probability is more closely allied with our Jesuit than with our cat lover, and he has been driving himself too hard.

Ruburt, incidentally, is to be congratulated, as he is just beginning to read books on physics, in order to intellectually keep up with the material as I give it. Never having read such books before, he was astounded to discover that I knew what he did not. He should be used to this by now.

This takes energy, and on those occasions when there is much activity of this sort, he will be seen to become fatigued. [...] It is this same sort of resistance, on a much simpler level, that he uses to block me whenever his ego becomes overly concerned.

[...] He is on what you may call a midplane of existence. [...]

By this time he can change his reference points, although his experience is so much more vivid, and so much fuller proportioned, that to him the experience could be likened to going down into a small cramped tunnel.

The pacing back and forth has always been a symbol and a manifestation of his insistence that he stay on his feet, this of course relating to his invalid mother; also a manifestation of control on his part as far as the sessions are concerned. Nor is he now relinquishing control. He is merely shifting focus from one level to another, and allowing me to speak in this manner, because he now realizes that I am no threat to any portion of his individuality as a self.

He is also however somewhat anxious to develop his abilities, and if he is to do so we must progress. [...]

[...] He is doing well. This is of course a training period, and he may become momentarily uneasy, but never frightened. [...]

This procedure, and your consent, will give Ruburt a feeling of trust without which I do not believe he would otherwise proceed. [...]

As for Ruburt, he became overconcerned about work because of the contracts (for Mass Events and God of Jane, which we have yet to sign with Prentice-Hall), and the foreign hassles. [...] He is still somewhat afraid of relaxing. [...] His body is responding, however, so let him remember that creativity is playful, and that it always surfaces when he allows his mind to drop its worries.

Four days after Sue’s visit we received an enthusiastic letter from an independent motion-picture producer and director in Hollywood, informing us that he’s finally succeeding in his quest for an option to the film rights to Jane’s novel, The Education of Oversoul Seven. [...] We’ve never asked Seth to comment upon either this project itself or anyone involved with it—nor has he volunteered such information, even in private sessions.

[...] When Ruburt forgot to worry because “he wasn’t working,” his natural playful creativity bubbled to the surface, and today he wrote poetry. [...]

[...] He’s also written a number of poems. [...]

[...] In ordinary terms her behavior is an extreme — and I added that when I asked Seth about this, he countered by talking about the extremes of poverty in Africa, say, but he said precious little about Jane per se. [...]

He is afraid of going home because of current conditions — but that fear also prolongs current conditions. [...] Both of you do indeed think in terms of impediments that do indeed seem all too real: the responsibility of maintaining good health, the financial question — and on Ruburt’s part, at least, the fear that he would not recover fully enough, but become ill again and require hospital attention once more.

[...] On another level, he is afraid of going home, thinking it almost impossible under current conditions. [...]

[...] I also think that when an individual wants protection or shielding from the world badly enough, he or she will go to any length to get it.)

[...] He chose those feelings however so that he could view the world and reality in a certain light. That light enabled him to do what he wanted to but could not fake: paint the world through that particular unique vision.

Van Gogh was true to his vision, which means he was true to the self he created for himself in that time, and so must you be. [...]

[...] Josef was not able to paint anything worthwhile past the age of 40, and he turned to a land-owner’s province.

Personally then he took upon himself what you would say perhaps were great problems—too great for the personality to handle, but his inner tendencies for self-mutilation always kept his vision true to his main image of the world.

Then, however, perhaps with no warning, he may suddenly refuse to make love with his wife, become hostile with his children, stop off for a few drinks after work, before supper, or even begin seeing a prostitute, or begin an affair — often with a woman he considers beneath his own station.

Joe A may be quite startled to discover bottles of whiskey lying around in his dresser drawers, when he hardly drinks liquor himself at all. Joe B may suddenly “come to” in a strange bedroom, in a compromising position with a woman it certainly seems to him he has never seen before in his life.

[...] He may carry on a fruitful accomplished existence for varying lengths of time.

On the other hand, Joe B may find himself in the middle of a family picnic, or other gathering — events that bore and displease him — or worse, he may not even remember his family at all. [...]

(Seth gave Don Wilbur a few lines of information concerning a job change he was considering, and Don has a copy of this material. Seth told Ann Diebler he could not at this time answer her questions concerning a friend in Newport News, Virginia, because he has not yet established an emotional rapport with her. He did willingly answer many other questions asked by Ann, Marilyn and Don, questions mostly based on the material itself and the concepts involved.

He thinks, or speaks, of Dr. Erickson. Or he and the man who arrived late both have Dr. Erickson as a common acquaintance. Perhaps he introduced them.

[...] He seems to be thinking of a fabric that is nubby. [...] One of these someone he has been waiting for, or hoped would arrive. [...]

[...] He also asked the Gallaghers not to say any more about the trip to him, once the subject had been brought up. [...]

[...] Mankind names and identifies even what he cannot see, and he divides and he separates. [...]

[...] John Bradley said the material was much harder to follow, when given verbally, than it was the last time he witnessed a session. [...] John also said he tried to communicate with Jane mentally while she was speaking, concerning his company, Searle Drug. [...]

[...] This is the first session he has attended since that of the 95th, October 7,1964. [...]

[...] Since he is acquainted with our later material, I will continue along the same lines.

He will be at all times a prisoner of clock time and of aging, for he will consider these the primary conditions under which he must operate. And the action, or actions involved in this belief will therefore act upon the physical cells of his body with vengeful force, because he has himself directed them to do so.

[...] (Pause.) I also believe that Dr. Instream had a drink of a liquor which he is not accustomed to drinking as a rule. (Pause.) That he would not ordinarily choose, for example.

Ruburt helped me in producing that voice that he himself heard, simply because of certain electromagnetic alterations that occur within the trance state; and Ruburt was in a trance state upon the specific occasion of which I was speaking.

Once more, even the word time is misleading, but within the boundaries of your clock reality every individual feels at times—but you see that the use of the word itself binds us—but every individual feels now and then the primary sense of existence that is not arbitrarily divided into moments and hours; and he therefore escapes from a secondary condition into the realization of a primary reality behind it.

[...] There is always a kind of artistic dissatisfaction that any true artist feels with work that is completed, for he is always aware of the tug and pull, and the tension, between the sensed ideal and its manifestation. [...] In the most basic of ways, the artist cannot say where he is going, for if he knows ahead of time he is not creating but copying.

[...] Man related the concept of free will long ago to the question of whether he could deliberately choose evil, for example. He still does. And he still struggles with questions about his freedom before God’s omnipotence and foreknowledge, and whether those qualities cause events, or can cause them, and whether they involve predestination. Opposing determinism is the idea that man has always fought for his personal responsibility—that instead of being controlled entirely by his heritage, he’s capable of forming new syntheses of thought and action based upon the complicated patterns of his own history.

[...] He brings to bear his own understanding, compassion, artistry, and if he is a good actor, or if she is, then when the play is over the actor is a better person for having played the role.

“The true artist is involved with the inner workings of himself with the universe—a choice, I remind you, that he or she has made, and so often the artist does indeed forsake the recognized roads of recognition. And more, seeing that, he often does not know how to assess his own progress, since his journey has no recognizable creative destination. [...]

[...] If he decided not to have sessions, or not to operate in the so-called psychic arena, this does not mean that he would be a failure in any way. He does not owe me a sense of commitment. [...]

[...] That sense of beauty, that reorientation, can relieve the feeling of responsibility that he has at times taken upon himself. He needs an orientation toward the simpler issues—those that carry within themselves a simpler childlike magic. He needs to turn away from an overconcern with life’s more ‘“weighty problems,” to lose the feeling that it is up to him to solve those problems for himself and you and for the world. [...]

[...] At the same time he does not deal directly with such people, so he cannot follow through, for example, as a therapist might. His class gave him some direct encounters through the years as he personally helped to direct others, and could watch the results through their achievement or behavior. [...]

It certainly does not seem to either of you that he is getting better. [...]

He and your other brother who died at 9 were in Europe for at least part of the same time, though Loren died at a fat and sassy monkish 81. He was not above dallying with shall I say fair maidens, but all in all was competent. Now as a teacher he uses the same talents he used in the past, his rather smirky tongue making up with jokes for prim silence that had suffered in the past. [...] He has been a male three times. The personalities which he has layered about him are not well rounded. [...]

[...] Consciously he had no intention of trying to dominate the session, but underneath he really wanted so much, and I don’t know him very well. [...]

[...] I do not know the significance of the spoon or what kind of shop he had, though I may be able to tell you at a later date.

[...] He is not, I’m afraid, her favorite relative. [...]

I will indeed now close our session, the reason mainly being that Ruburt has been oriented in a quickened fashion toward our work since he began his book again, and he has used additional energy in doing so. [...] It is only the transition here that has caused the additional use of energy, and he is readily adapting himself so that he will not be under strain. [...]

[...] What I meant of course was that he had not catalogued the later material under the various inner senses, as he had originally designated them. I felt that he would eventually do so. [...]

[...] Incidentally, his system automatically as a rule seeks those foods that tend to build up the particular sort of energy that he uses in the main. As a rule therefore, proteins are indeed a most beneficial food to him, and it is for this reason that he automatically seeks them out.

[...] Such a situation increased Ruburt’s sense of not being safe, of course, and yet also reinforced feelings of independence, for he did not have to feel as dependent upon Marie as he might otherwise. [...]

In a fashion therefore he possessed a greater leeway of mental activity (long pause). [...] He could assimilate much new knowledge by means of the creative mechanisms, which could not transform troublesome ideas into other symptoms that could become quite acceptable. [...]

First of all, some of the ideas in the Magical Child book are excellent, and though he has not read the book thoroughly by any means, some new understandings have been reached through the use of those ideas and his own recent experiences by Ruburt.

Now Ruburt had only one parent available most of the time (long pause), and he did not feel secure in that relationship—a situation chosen ahead of time, now. [...]

[...] Muscles being released are, as he has noticed, at first sore, then he realizes a new freedom or function regained.

[...] He should not be worried if a freedom shows one day, then, and not the next. [...]

Ruburt should continue reading the sessions he has picked out, every other day or so, plus my current personal material. [...]

[...] Wiping his eyes when filling the shaker, he jabbed his eye. [...] He had vainly daydreamed that his father might send unexpected money, with which he could complete that set of dishes to which the pepper shaker belongs.

Tell Ruburt to call on me before he sleeps, and we shall see what we can do for his comfort. He is stubborn, but he is learning. [...]

[...] If such past memories are consciously recovered, as they have been, the closed mind of the academic psychologist will not see what he has, but will suppose the overworked imagination responsible. [...]

[...] When the individual is convinced that his activities are completely dependent upon the physical brain, then he is incapacitated almost completely by any injury to it. [...]

(I also think that Seth himself could have some pretty funny things to say here to Jane and me — some day I’ll ask him — words with which he’d humorously caution us not to take the whole affair too seriously, to leave room in our daily lives for the simple, uninhibited joy of creative expression and living even while we study his unending outpouring of material. [...] Seth has already offered Jane encouragement twice since he finished his part of the work for Mass Events in August 1979. He came through with the following quotations when Jane began to express a renewed concern about her responsibility for his material, and for the reactions of others to it. [...]

(By his own definition Seth is no longer a physical being, although he’s told us he’s lived a number of previous lives; thus, ideas of reincarnation enter into his material. Mass Events is the sixth¹ book that Seth has produced — all of them with Jane’s active cooperation, obviously, as well as my own, since I write down his material verbatim, then add my own notes. [...]

(We usually hold two “sessions,” or meetings with Seth each week, totaling three or four hours, but we think that actually Seth could talk 24 hours a day for the rest of our lives, and still not cover all of the material he’s capable of tuning in to for us. [The only trouble is that Jane and I wouldn’t last long!] That astonishing creativity and energy in the sessions beckon us on constantly, then, regardless of what we think about Seth’s “reality or nonreality,” and even regardless of what he tells us about himself.

[...] And he is. I put him in the cellar, where he sleeps each night.)

However it is your duty, and the duty of every individual insofar as it is within his power, to maintain his own psychic health and vitality; according to the strength of this vitality he will protect himself and others. Negative expectations, far from protecting either the individual or those with whom he comes in contact, will actually, to a greater or lesser degree, turn as destructive as any epidemic.

His nature is independent, but the independence is blunted when he is not sure of what he is dealing with. [...]

[...] He reported my words correctly.

[...] However he correctly, if subconsciously, interpreted your attitude toward the publishing house as being basically dangerous to you. [...]