“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] According to Judaism and Christianity, among many religions, man could seek forgiveness and salvation; he had a soul. After Darwin, he learned that even his physical presence on earth was an accident of nature. He was taught — he taught himself — that ideas of souls and gods were ridiculous. Either way, this very fallible creature found himself vulnerable to forces that consciously he couldn’t understand — even though, in Seth’s view, down through the millennia man had chosen all of his religious and antireligious experiences.

(Seth’s statement just given, that fully developed men coexisted with their supposed ancestors, led to our request that he follow through with more information on the subject. He’s done so to some extent, and here we’re presenting material from one of those later sessions to show his thinking. He continues to confound accepted evolutionary theory. [...] But at least, I told Jane, he’s said certain things that we can ask questions about, whether from the viewpoint of evolution, time, language, civilization, or whatever. The excerpts to follow, incidentally, are those I referred to earlier in this appendix, when I wrote that just as Jane had supplemented Seth’s material on early man with some of her own [as given in Appendix 6 in Volume 1], he in turn added to hers:)

[...] As I interpret what I’ve read, Darwin didn’t deny the existence of a god of some kind, but he wanted one that would abolish what he saw as the “upward” struggle for existence. [...] Darwin came to believe that he asked the impossible of God. Instead, he assigned the pain and suffering in the world to the impersonal workings of natural selection and chance variation [or genetic mutation]. [...]

[...] No matter how beautifully man works out a hypothesis or theory, he still does so without any thought of consciousness coming first. Through the habitual (and perhaps unwitting) use of naïve realism, he projects his own basic creativity outside of himself or any of his parts. He also projects upon cellular components like genes and DNA¹⁴ learned concepts of “protection” and “selfishness”: DNA is said to care only about its own survival and “knowledge,” and not whether its host is man, plant, or animal. [...]

[...] He can do as he likes. He will be using the same ideas, but different methods, in any case. [...]

[...] Now he jumped into Jane’s lap, so I had to lay my notebook aside. He purred as I carried him back to the studio. [...]

[...] If he is able to perceive the other areas of consciousness, he may find himself in still more difficulty — not realizing that both systems of reality are valid.

[...] When a personality realizes that such other realities exist and that other experiences with consciousness are possible, then he activates certain potentials within himself. [...]

[...] When he is writing he does not think in terms of impediments. What impediments there may be, he brushes aside.

When an idea for a book or a poem comes to him, he “tunes into it” immediately. [...] He takes it for granted that his intent will be executed —

[...] I also found a young man in the bar who knew the two who had taken the car, but he was afraid to tell me who they were. [...]

Ruburt read it, and is reading it, looking for those feelings that allowed vast improvements to occur at the time—and for once he did not look into the past with his usual self-disapproval. To some extent he began to recapture some of those feelings. With what he has learned, and with that emotional touchstone, he has indeed made good strides, which are quite obvious for both of you to see. [...]

Tell Ruburt to tell himself that he can slowly but definitely make small adjustments in his thinking, feeling, belief — that even despite his panic he can feel those changes move around in his psyche.

Again, he is not abandoned. He is in no way responsible for his mother’s problems, and no matter how strong his fears, universal energy lifts him up regardless of all else. [...]

He is now in another sphere of activity. He is not in the reincarnational cycle. [...] He is continuing his own development. [...]

([Ron:] “There is also the [Asian deity—name lost]   He has attained nirvana, but he stays around and helps people who are still in the reincarnational cycle.”)

Now he is a psychic entity and as such he is a valid reality, as Christ is, and you can all study that sentence. [...]

A dandy was a gentleman with high and fine and fancy white fluffed collars in the latest fashion, who wore girdles and bound in his waist, who was flirtatious and usually quite artificial in behavior, who dealt above all things in ritualized verbal activities, who got where he could get anyway he could. [...]

[...] When he sees it as a method of his own expression, he will realize his own creativeness.

[...] He had the idea for this chapter very clearly in mind, she said; and, with extraordinary vividness, he was “impressing” her with his idea of matter being used as a means of communication. [...]

[...] But before we are finished we will see that basically speaking, each of you create the book you hold in your hands, and that your entire physical environment comes as naturally out of your inner mind as words come out of your mouths, and that man forms physical objects as unselfconsciously and as automatically as he forms his own breath.

[...] We talked about many things, and he’s to get back to me regarding Jane’s social security, disability payments, income, and so on. He’s also ordered a birth certificate for me from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and is to check with social security about what benefits I may be able to get while still working.

[...] As I left the house, I was greeted in the driveway by Frank Longwell, who was checking up on whether I was watering the back yard and the new tree the way he told me to.

[...] It might also be advisable for the patient to take up some completely new field of knowledge — to learn a language, for instance, or to study whatever books possible in any field to which he or she is attracted.

[...] He or she should be enlightened enough through doctor-patient discussions to make choices about the treatment. [...]

[...] He must of course make his own choice as to the extent to which he wants to commit himself to our work. His feelings in all directions bearing on these issues should be aired, acknowledged, discussed, and then action taken in line with what he discovers.

[...] He need not plunge into another contract, for example. Rigidity of attitude, setting up either/ors, is a problem, and you can help him recognize when he does this.

[...] The unresolved and partially-buried attitudes that you have written down upon your paper (our creed), and the fact that many of these were so repressed that he would not think about them himself, much less discuss them with you, unless he was driven to it.

[...] He is probably more acutely aware of possibilities than I am, although I have been turning them over at a great rate lately. [...]

Such a discussion also serves to force Ruburt to say what he thinks, clarifies his own feelings, for he is not used to vocalizing them. [...]

[...] Again, he suffers more from the lack of rich emotional interaction than you; he is less able to take it.

Ruburt was correct then in those statements he made last evening, having to do with the balance of routine and spontaneity, for his nature does need both. [...]

[...] He managed to go ahead creatively despite this, though at great difficulty.

[...] He presumes that consciousness must be organized about an ego structure. And what he calls the unconscious, not so egotistically organized, he, therefore, considers without consciousness—without consciousness of self. He makes a good point, saying that the normal ego cannot know unconscious material directly. He does not realize, however, nor do your other psychologists, what I have told you often—that there is an inner ego; and it is this inner ego that organizes what Jung would call unconscious material.

Jung enlarged on some of his concepts shortly before he died. (Leaning forward, humorously emphatic.) He has changed a good many of them since then. [...]

The doctor, you see, that you might have been and are not in this system, once dreamed of a probable universe in which he would be an artist. He continues to work out his own probabilities. Perhaps he paints as a hobby. He exists however in fact, within another system. You call his system an alternate system of probability but this is precisely what he would call your system.

[...] The individual chooses then which probabilities he desires to make actual in physical terms.

Most of these are not as symbolic however as Jung thought them to be, though he used a different term, and had only a dim conception of them. [...]

(10:00.) He is correct in thinking that these sensations begin about 20 minutes after he lies down, as a rule, as the muscles gradually begin to relax. [...] The relationship of knees and hips begins to change, requiring also greater activity from the spine and back areas, so that he feels at times pulled in several directions at once. [...]

[...] According to Tam, we’re not supposed to know anything about much of what he’s been telling us of the fuss over the disclaimer.

Add to this the fact that he is learning to trust his body (pause), but is still at times besieged by doubts, and his difficulty is explained. [...]

[...] This does not show up yet when he is trying to walk in a taller position—but the improvement in the arm span will also help him there. [...]

[...] He found himself greeting a large number of people. He believed them to be family members, though he only recognized some. [...]

[...] When an artist paints a picture, he uses discrimination. He or she chooses one area of concentration. [...]

[...] As you’ll see, he managed to do both, winding a discussion of my dream into his own material about the psyche.)

[...] If Joseph had seen two people — one his brother and one an Oriental — he would not have recognized the stranger, so in the dream his brother’s known appearance dominated, while the Oriental affiliation is merely suggested. [...]

(As can be seen by Seth’s comments about the mass world mind-brain, he was all ready to launch into some new material. And though he mentioned a new book, Jane and I had no idea that he’d begin one within a few weeks’ time — yet that’s exactly what happened.

[...] The session hadn’t been underway long before I’d realized he was bringing Psyche to a close. [...]

[...] Waking up now, he stretched, jumped down, then up into Jane’s lap as she spoke for Seth. [...]

He is a sweet creature.

[...] He has quite properly trusted himself as he never did before in his life—in this life—and the results are making themselves known.

(11:12.) Ruburt is learning about the unknown reality, and in his own way he is making such a journey as the one suggested in this book. [...]

[...] Bill is in the process, incidentally, of moving out of his parents’ home and into a studio and apartment in downtown Elmira, where he is going to live and at the same time maintain an art gallery. It will also be recalled that in several different sessions Bill was counseled by Seth to live alone, lest he suffer a recurrence of his lung trouble.)

[...] He will now, that is Ruburt will now, do very well.

Earlier he was not yet ready, for various reasons.

Now, I asked our friend to question himself to discover why he felt it necessary to continue the relationship, and what emotional needs were being met. I did not imply that the needs were necessary, only that he felt they were and that he should discover the reasons why he felt these needs were necessary. [...]

[...] He did not ask you to question yourself. He did not ask you to look into yourself, and to discover those reasons why you had put up with that situation for so many years. He did not ask you to discover what needs within you were being satisfied in your marriage, anymore, my dear friend, than you asked yourself why you brought the tape to class this evening. [...]

[...] With what power do you invest him that he should know better than you the feelings that are within your own heart? [...]

([Jane:] “Brad should look into the reasons why he felt it necessary to stay with his wife.”

[...] Our friend over here deliberates, which is also good, but he does not deliberate in a dry manner, but creatively. And while he does not speak often in class, what is said in class sinks into his mind, and he uses it in his own way. He uses what is important and discards what he does not need. [...]

[...] It is against my principles, and do not be surprised that I called Ruburt a puritan for he is, a strange mixture of a complete primitive and a complete puritan, and if it were not for me he would be very solemn-faced, indeed. [...]

[...] Say, “I feel this way and I must express it at this time or be honest, but he has his protection from my feelings. He is filled with the vitality of life even as I am.” [...]

(To Natalie.) You can count on your friend, and he will be there more often. [...]

[...] He does not work well with it. He is afraid that it can lead to laxness. He yearns toward the cool hours, which then become significant.

[...] “I think Seth’s going to add a Part 4 to this book,” she said, “and he’s going to call it ‘The Practicing Idealist.’ And I want to keep changing it to ‘Practicing Idealism,’ because his heading sounds too much like it’s already been used. [...]

[...] When man spoke of the sacredness of life — in his more expansive moods — he referred to human life alone. [...]

[...] I am not speaking of any playful competition, obviously, but of a determined, rigorous, desperate, sometimes almost deadly competition, in which a person’s value is determined according to the number of individuals he or she has shunted aside.