“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] Man cannot disentangle himself from the natural context of his physical life. His culture, his religion, his psychologies, and his psychological nature together form the context within which both private and mass events occur. [...]

(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. [...]

(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. [...]

A person’s private experience happens in the context of his psychological and biological status, and basically cannot be separated from his religious and philosophical beliefs and sentiments, and his cultural environment and political framework —

A man who makes a statue uses his conscious mind, his creative abilities, his physical body, and the inner resources of his own being.

[...] But all of this may have little to do with the artist’s interpretation of his own symbols, or with his personal experience, so he may wonder how the critics could read this into his work.

Deliberately he decides to create a sculpture, and automatically focuses his energies in that direction. [...]

[...] If you read books in which you are told that a certain object always represents such and such, then you are like the artist who accepts the critic’s idea of the symbols in his own work. [...]

He learns from his students. [...] Therefore his own abilities grow. I will help him when he asks me in his classes, as long as he does not ask too often. [...]

[...] He need have no fears now over his classes, as the membership will be maintained. If students do drop out they will be replaced, for his energies are being properly, and you may tell him, most effectively used, in the classes themselves.

[...] This was his first experience with a table. He ended up laughing until the tears rolled down his cheeks, as the three of us went round and round the room with the table.

[...] John Bradley was misquoted there; he has heard of alfalfa extract, and indeed remembers his mother using it many years ago. [...]

[...] One important point: he gobbles experience, emphasizes it, studies it—and that quality also means that his bodily sensations are treated in the same manner. That is why the concentration upon the moment, upon his writing, upon, say, meals, immediately helps to take his mind off of his body. [...]

The material he received from me (Monday evening) was from me, and his suggestion that you work late that evening was the result of a creative impulse on his part. [...]

[...] It stemmed from his material in the session for June 5, when he said that “letting go” could have its frightening aspects for Jane, especially when she relied on such actions to improve her physical abilities like walking. [...]

The letting-go of effort should be also a mental and psychological stance applied not only to Ruburt’s physical dilemma, but to his—and your—relationships with the subjective and objective worlds. [...]

(Seth said he was not careful enough in sorting out his own impressions. [...] Bill indicated the color of the teapot in his sketch, saying the object is anything but nondescript. [...]

(After Seth announced his presence Bill said that half an hour previously he had wondered whether Seth might speak. [...]

[...] Jane was my son in that life, his name being Graton. [...]

(Brotzanin II had been one of the ships with which Seth had been connected in his Denmark life. [...]

(Merle did not know we were eating there, but did know we were in New York City, having been so informed by phone by his wife, with whom I work in Elmira. [...] Merle and his wife used to live in the apartment house we occupy in Elmira. [...]

[...] Jane spoke for Seth while facing Frederick Fell across his desk, but her eyes remained closed. [...]

—that in the future I help our friend arrange his business matters. [...]

(Seth spoke to F. Fell, who then asked Seth a question concerning his daughter’s safety on an upcoming trip to Europe.)

At the same time, he does indeed need the expressions of love on your part, as you need his. He identifies strongly with his work, so that there is often, however, a misunderstanding on his part, so that if you criticize, say, any portion of the work, or his handling of it with Prentice or whatever, he often takes that as a criticism of himself. [...]

(8:38.) You were quite correct, of course, in reminding him that his eyes themselves were healthy. [...] The planning alone has some beneficial result, since in his mind he already sees himself with some considerable improvement. [...]

[...] In exaggerated form, Ruburt makes the same statement of his own with his own symptoms—that is, they also express attitudes. [...]

[...] I was upset because I felt it was all true, and because I’d felt like interrupting constantly as Seth was giving his material. [...]

[...] You cannot cut down physical freedom without inhibiting creative freedom, so to some extent Ruburt’s methods have inhibited his creativity. You cannot inhibit spontaneity in one area and not in another, but he did not get it properly through his head that spontaneity did not mean license, or that spontaneity was going to work against his work if he gave it half a chance. [...]

His intent in Framework 2 was so clear that his creative spontaneity was retained to a large degree despite the blankets he threw upon it. He equated, again, the writer or poet as highly gifted but emotionally not stable, so that he thought he had to set himself against his own nature in order to produce.

Ruburt’s reading in college, and his friends there, led him to believe that the artistically gifted were not too well equipped to handle normal living. [...] But he made his judgment.

[...] Actually, it was a note from him to Prentice-Hall, asking for review copies of the Seth books, and that his note be forwarded to Jane. [...]

[...] He hated the Jews, but somehow he was obsessed with the idea that Moses was more powerful than Allah, and for years this was the secret sin upon his conscience. [...] They forced his mouth open and stuffed it with burning coals, as a starter. He cried to Allah, and then in greater desperation to Moses, and as his consciousness left his body, Moses was there.

[...] After death, an individual may visualize his (immediately previous physical) life as an animal with which he must come to terms, and such a battle or encounter has far-reaching consequences, for the man must come to terms with all portions of himself. In this case, whether the hallucination ends with him riding the animal, making friends with it, domesticating it, killing it or being killed by it, each alternative… (Jane coughed, then paused and took a sip of beer) is carefully weighed, and the results will have much to do with his future development.

[...] He will see no continuity at all, and feel himself flung without rhyme or reason from one experience to another, never realizing that his own thoughts are propelling him quite literally.

[...] He was a very likable chap, and under the circumstances I did not mind when he seemed to expect a battle for his soul. [...]

[...] This was his last reincarnation. [...]

[...] He came back under his own free will to teach you.

[...] Marriage and children for his own nature. [...]

[...] She was his wife in the past life, when he died at 32. [...]

In those states, while his body is resting, he is learning greater agility both physically and in natural manipulation of the magical approach in general. He is also given at such times immediate physical feedback: he realizes at once that his body is more at ease, more agile, and so forth. His state of mind during the day then varies, so that with his files (of poetry) today he was in a highly relaxed, creative, productive, mental level, one that served to cushion his mind from the critical reproaches he can often give himself, and therefore bodily relaxation could continue. [...]

It seems you need certain practical instructions that involve direct experience, immediate feedback, and Ruburt has been receiving some of that in the dream state, and also to some extent in his waking reality, as he begins to trust the feelings of support and relaxation. [...]

[...] Even as I did he slipped, landed on his backside, then tumbled over the edge as he scrambled for his balance. [...]

[...] Both of these involved my younger brother Bill, who lives in Rochester, NY with his wife and 3 children.

(Then Bill went ahead, his body curled up into a ball, much like a fetal position. I saw him coast over the edge of the fall. [...]

[...] Seth doesn’t get all the way through his analysis, but promises to in an early session. [...]

For the investigator himself, through his actions, inadvertently brings about, in specific instances, those results for which he looks. [...] In hypnosis the subject is not as much on guard as a subject of an experiment when the subject knows in advance that he will be awakened by the experimenter, when electrodes are attached to the physical organism, when the conditions of the sleep laboratory are substituted for his ordinary nightly environment. It is impossible to study dreams when an attempt is made to isolate the dreamer from his own personality, to treat dreams as if they were physical or mechanical. [...]

[...] This is not his job, and it will work against our results. His job is to remain as spontaneous as possible. His work in attempting to tabulize the test results thus far, will only hamper our results. [...]

[...] You can suggest ordinary sleep, and then suggest that the subject, in his sleep and without waking, give a verbal description of his dream or dreams.

The scientist of whom you have read, in his experiments attempts to deprive the individual of sleep.

[...] Moreover, science’s thesis meets with no answering affirmation in the human heart—and in fact arouses the deepest antipathy, for in his heart man well knows his own worth, and realizes that his own consciousness is no accident.⁵ The psyche, then, possesses within itself an inner affirmation, an affirmation that provides the impetus for physical emergence, an affirmation that keeps man from being completely blinded by his own mental edifices (all with much emphasis and fast delivery.

[...] When Ruburt forgot to worry because “he wasn’t working,” his natural playful creativity bubbled to the surface, and today he wrote poetry. Poetry, however, did not fit into his current ideas about work, and so that excellent creativity was hardly counted at all.

(9:33.) There is furthermore a deep, subjective, immaculately knowledgeable standard within man’s consciousness by which he ultimately judges all of the theories and the beliefs of his time, and even if his intellect is momentarily swamped by ignoble doctrines, still that point of integrity within him is never fooled.

[...] He is very enthusiastic about his value tests, and his enthusiasm is what is important. [...]

[...] He did nothing about it on his own, except finally to rent the other apartment, but he has been holding his breath quite literally, for some time.

[...] It was thought of in terms of social transition, or your place in society, and transition in terms of your work, particularly here on Ruburt’s side—on his part. [...]

[...] I felt the force of his momentary anger, I felt personally involved. [...]

[...] It is his resentment against this apartment (5). [...]

A person could neither be proud of personal achievement nor blamed for failure, since in large measure his characteristics, potentials, and lacks were seen as the result of chance, heredity, and of unconscious mechanisms over which he seemingly had little control. The devil went underground, figuratively speaking, so that many of his mischievous qualities and devious characteristics were assigned to the unconscious. [...] He believed himself to be programmed by his heredity and early environment, so that it seemed he must be forever unaware of his own true motives.⁴

(“In an important fashion those private sessions parallel his material for Mass Events … material that did make us view the world and current events quite differently than we had earlier. [...] Certainly he tried his best, and any failings are on our parts.

[...] The individual must make his or her own way through a barrage of different value systems, making decisions that were largely unthought of when a son followed his father’s trade automatically, for example, or when marriages were made largely for economic reasons.

[...] Tam Mossman did visit later that month, and at his urging Jane did go back to work on Seven Two with her old enthusiasm.

“Billy belonged in another probability, and in a fashion you switched probabilities for him, though without his consent, when you took him from the animal shelter, where he would have soon been ‘done away with.’ His three years with you represented a grace period for him…. He did not make this probability his own because of what you may call ‘other commitments’ — or rather, other purposes.

[...] Seth went into those questions while talking about Billy in sessions 837–39, but his material is much too long to print in Mass Events — and even too long to touch upon the highlights in any adequate way. [...] We hope they’ll indicate some of the directions his answers took, about those intimate challenges that concern us all.

[...] When he returned he found Billy dead in his cage. [...]

[...] Even though he didn’t call this 840th session book dictation, we’re presenting part of it here because the material fits in so well with his themes for Mass Events.)

There is some difference, of course, in Ruburt’s mind between his attitude toward his books and mine. [...] He would (pause), had I not emerged, written books of his own in any case. He would have encountered no unusual obstacles as far as his public stance was concerned, in that he would have felt the rather characteristic dilemma of some creative writers, who must assimilate the private and public portions of their experiences. He would have had no unusual difficulty, however, in say, standing up for his own ideas—holding his own, so to speak, in any arguments or philosophies. [...]

[...] He was determined to go ahead, because his own value fulfillment sought those directions—such was his nature. My published works, however, presented him with what he felt to be a public stance in a different fashion than his own would (louder). [...]

If Ruburt wants to disagree with the world’s knowledge, he feels that it is his right—and again, would defend such ideas forthrightly. They would be based upon experiences that are his own—many that you have shared as a result of your own personal experiences together. [...] My self-evident knowledge comes even if I were no more, again, than a part of his larger psyche, from reaches that would be inaccessible in those terms to him (all emphatically). [...]

[...] Ruburt feels that he could, for example, explain any of his own books from his own framework quite well. [...]

[...] Although his internal data reinforce mine to some extent, he can be no more specific about a physical location in the city for his visions than I can be for mine. [...] Just as I do, Peter rebels in his own peaceful ways against conventional authority, preferring to go his individual route in the arts, no matter how dubious his rewards may be.

[...] He’d related the entire affair to her some months ago; his original perceptions had taken place over seven years ago, long before Sue had introduced him to Jane and me in 1973. Peter told me after class that my sketches had instantly rearoused his memories, although in his experience he’d seen the event from different angles. Yet, even with those discrepancies, and a few others, Peter believed that the walls in Jerusalem, the battlemented tower, the soldiers that I’d just described and depicted, were all the same as those he’d seen in his own visions of so much earlier.

[...] He had a bandage wrapped around the biceps of his left arm. [...] I kept this second image in mind for some time before allowing myself to realize that the victim fell amid a group of his fellows. [...]

[...] I didn’t “see” the reasons and actions leading to his presence there, and I doubt if I ever will. [...] Then I “picked up” that my soldier-self was killed by his countrymen because he’d traitorously sought to warn Zealot leaders of a planned search of the lower city of Jerusalem by Roman troops. [...]

[...] The fact is that they can never be condoned, and yet they must be understood for what they are: man learning through his own errors. He also learns by his successes, and there are times when he holds his hand, moments of deliberation, periods of creativity. [...]

You may even smile at the child’s utter sense of desolation until he finally connects the motion of his own hand with the destruction of the paper, cardboard house that is now gone, and in his eyes gone beyond repair.

[...] He feared it then and afterward, even in his fascination, because he was bound to recognize that it would sweep he and his enemy into insanity or death.(...him and..?)

[...] He has learned his A B C’s, but that is all. [...]