“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Here, our cat Willy jumped up on Jane’s lap as she sat while dictating. [...] Jane did not appear to be bothered, but to be sure I lay my notes aside and put Willy in another room. While I was moving about Jane sat quietly. [...]

(On February 1 I began to make a list of daily predictions, as Jane has been doing for some time now.

(In addition Jane and I visited Jim and Marian Spaziani, our landlord and his wife, to make arrangements for them to attend the session for next Monday, February 8. The Spazianis will also bring a mutual friend.

(See the attached copies of Jane’s reincarnation and grandfather dreams of March 6, and her nightmarish experience of March 8. All of these are very important, I think, with the experience of March 8 taking precedence, I’d say. [...] Jane woke me up often during the night while she was having the March 8 experience, and we think it contains many important clues to her hassles. [...]

(We’d thought that Seth might refer to them in the session for last Monday, but none was held because once again Jane was so relaxed on the couch after supper. [...]

Some of Ruburt’s short notes, written after the nightmare experience (and which I’ve asked Jane to copy for this record), show that he is beginning to put that material into its proper reference. [...]

[...] Jane left trance easily. As Seth left, Jane said, she got from him that the particular trance he was discussing tonight could, or would, be used in sessions; it would let Seth come through “stronger,” though Jane then questioned the use of this word, and said “immediate” might be a better one.

(Seth could have gone on for hours, Jane said. When I asked her why the session ended if both seemed able to continue, Jane paused, then said: “I know why we ended it.” [...] Jane didn’t hear Seth tell her this within; she merely “got” the information.

[...] Jane came out of trance quickly. [...]

(From 9:00 to 9:30 tonight, at my suggestion, Jane and I sat to see if we could get Jane into her library. [...] They included a projection through the eastern wall of our living room, and a “visitor” who returned with her; the Latin title of a book; her awareness of a third eye; some material, with diagrams, of me as a monk who wrote manuscripts in an underground chamber that he later sealed; a vision of Seth in a brown robe, looking as I’ve painted him—but the brown robe was “too easy,” Jane said suspiciously. Jane also did succeed in approximating entry into her library; her own notes will cover this.

(This note added in 2003: Jane died in 1984. [...]

(When she took a break Jane also received the first line of a poem, she told me when she came back into the living room. [...]

[...] He had arrived yesterday to spend the weekend with us and to discuss the book Jane is doing on the Seth material. At midnight, on September 5th, Jane gave a series of impressions for Tam, speaking as herself; Tam verified the psychological content of most of them. [...]

(Tam was a little nervous as time for the session approached, and Jane was also. [...] Jane began speaking for Seth, in trance, in a voice good but not exceptional. [...]

[...] Too much was going (Jane gestured for emphasis) and not enough was coming in. [...]

[...] Jane’s delivery throughout was fairly rapid.)

(“I’m afraid that Jane’s symptoms lead her to concentrate too much upon them. [...]

[...] But he [meaning Jane] doesn’t.”)

6. Jane covers our York Beach “dancing episode” in Chapter 2 of The Seth Material, and also quotes information Seth gave us on it in later sessions. The mystifying event took place during our vacation in York Beach, Maine, in August, 1963, a few months before Jane began to speak for Seth. At the time we understood little of what happened; yet the event represented a key episode at the very beginning of our psychic education; for in a crowded, smoky hotel barroom Jane and I unknowingly created physical “personality fragments” of ourselves — then came face to face with them. [...]

5. Jane is now working on the final draft of her own theoretical work on psychic matters, Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology. [...] In her glossary for Adventures Jane defines the living area as “The ‘paths’ our lives follow from birth to death.”

(In the last session, Seth began discussing separate photographs of Jane and me [taken at the ages of 12 and 2, respectively] in connection with his ideas about probable selves. [...]

[...] There are more “coincidences” involved than those Seth described tonight, none of them consciously known to Jane and me before the Sayre adventure: Mr. Markle is in a nursing home but a few miles from where we live in Elmira, and my mother spent her last days in a similar home less than 15 miles away; one of Mr. Markle’s children lives in Elmira, and is connected with a store Jane and I have visited; Mr. Johnson, of the real estate couple that conducted us about in Sayre, did sign painting and truck lettering as a younger man, as I did; he and I had several mutual acquaintances in Sayre, among them an older artist of some reputation — and now deceased — that we had known in our high school days; and so forth.

2. The “real estate people” who showed Jane and me through the Markle place last Thursday, April 25, are a husband-and-wife team who operate a small real estate and insurance agency in Sayre. [...] Jane wasn’t attracted to it as much as I was, of course, so that knowledge helped keep my own enthusiasm in check. [...]

At the time of the session I understood Seth to mean that the second house Jane and I looked at on April 25 was also my mother’s second choice of the day for us. [...] For not only would both houses have to be for sale at the same time, and not only would Jane and I have to inspect them on the same day — but of the hundreds of houses in Sayre, it would be necessary that these two had ranked first and second in my mother’s preference for many years. [...]

[...] Jane’s trance had been good, her delivery even and rather quiet. [...] “Oh, he’s got them stacked up to here,” and Jane patted the top of her head.

(A subsequent note, with some references: Seth’s closing remark about other books of Jane’s proved to be quite accurate. [...] Portions of each one are dealt with in these chapters, and Jane also discusses them in her Introduction. [...]

[...] Waking up now, he strolled over to Jane as she sat in her rocker speaking for Seth. [...]

(These notes give me a chance to hint at another in the series of “house connections” that Jane and I have become so much aware of this month — for there is a close professional relationship between the owner of the Foster Avenue house and the real estate agency through which we’re buying the house on the hill. Jane and I had heard of this association in a remote way, but it had no meaning for us until we committed ourselves to the hill house; the agency concerned is but one of many we’d contacted; yet also involved is our friend Debbie, who works for another real estate firm, and who had first called our attention to the hill house. There are more intertwinings here [including some art elements] than it’s necessary to describe; but studying just this one complex house connection, then seeing how it combines with some of the others we’ve become conscious of; leaves Jane and me more than a little bemused by this interlocking reality we’re creating.²

1. I want to note here that at the same time Jane and I decided to buy the hill house, we learned that the house next door, to the west, would soon be for sale; because of a job transfer its owner would be moving with his family to California this summer. [...] Although Jane and I liked the place well enough, we had no doubt that the hill house was the one for us.

(On Friday, February 21, Jane and I not only saw the hill house from the inside for the first time — but decided to buy it. [...]

[Jane:] Go down garage steps some better. [...]

[Jane’s Questions for Seth:]

JANE’S & ROB’S NOTES

(As Seth, Jane leaned forward for emphasis while speaking. [...] Jane would deliver a sentence, then pause longer than usual, so that her accustomed rhythm was a little off.)

[...] A minute or two before the session began Jane told me that she had a “glimmer” from Seth — a few sentences. [...]

[...] Jane was out of her trance quickly. [...]

(The index proofs for God of Jane arrived day before yesterday, and Jane found them okay when she checked them today. [...] Jane thinks Tam meant the paperback edition of Volume 2 of “Unknown,” since the week’s sales figures, which arrived today, show sales of some 3,000 copies of that edition. But we’re still uneasy over the whole Mass Events affair —the disclaimer question, Jane’s reaction to the book itself since Seth started giving it, etc.—and any delay only serves to make us more suspicious, I’m afraid. [...]

(Today I mentioned to Jane that I’d like Seth to go into some of the elements of question 17 on the list I’ve compiled so far—especially those parts of it pertaining to why didn’t the overall personality know when it had gone far enough, or even too far, concerning the symptoms. [...]

(Once more, Jane wasn’t comfortable in her chair as she prepared for the session at 9 PM. [...]

(Last Thursday I finished the final pen-and-ink drawing of the 40 I’d planned for Jane’s book of poetry, Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time.¹ I spent Friday checking the batch, then on Saturday morning I mailed them to Tam Mossman, Jane’s editor at Prentice-Hall. [...]

(As we waited for the session to begin Jane abruptly received a block of impressions from Seth. [...] The impressions are for use in either “Unknown” Reality, Jane said, or in Psychic Politics.⁵ She grinned: “Thanks, Seth.” [...]

[...] Seth even had “a bunch of stuff” available on Jane, myself, and music. This included data on my starting to take violin lessons when I was eight years old — an event I hadn’t thought of for what seemed to be decades [it took place in 1927], but which I was able to instantly recall as soon as Jane mentioned it.)

(My mother lives with my brother and his family in a small community in upstate New York, near Rochester, and Jane and I had spent the weekend visiting one and all. During our drive back to Elmira this morning Jane said, “Somebody’s working on Seth’s book, I can tell you that. [...]

2. A reminder: Seth usually calls Jane by her male entity name, Ruburt — and thus “he,” “him,” etc.

4. In this book there are many examples of various kinds of altered states of consciousness on Jane’s part. [...]

[...] Jane had been in an excellent trance state. [...]

(The session ended at 11:59 P.M. — and once again, Jane was full of energy.

(Jane has decided that she’ll let my ordinary session notes — brief as they are — suffice for Psyche, and that she’ll add few, if any, of her own. [...]

(“I’ll tell you something,” Jane said as we sat for the session at 8:55. [...]

(Then at 9:04 Jane discovered a sudden freedom in bodily motion: She could reach across her chest with her left arm, toward her right side, at the same time that she turned to the right from the hips—a movement I hadn’t seen her execute in years.... [...]

[...] Jane said just before the session began, “but I don’t know how long it’ll be.” [...]

[...] “I wanted all I could get so bad,” Jane gasped between breaths, “and I could feel myself lapsing.... I’d even caught myself lapsing; I was weary,” Jane said, laughing, that she’d be willing to sit there until 3 o’clock in the morning to get what she wanted in a session, but: “You’re not sitting on your ass until three o’clock in the morning,” I said. [...]

(Sometimes I wonder if I’m supposed to work on Dreams these days at all—whether it may not be a project whose time is not yet for either Jane or me. [...]

(Jane continues to have accelerated movement in her knees—a very encouraging sign. [...]

Jane: What I imagine is that in Creative Writing class which consists here today of two people, Charlie’s mother, and Hope W., who is a young gal or a gal in, I don’t know how old, 30 maybe, no, 28. [...]

Jane: Okay, you can call  it the dark side of the personality and you can compare, if you just look at it that way, the helper with the bright side of the personality if you want. [...]

Jane: Alright. [...]

(A hassle began developing last Thursday, involving Pat Golbitz at Pocket Books, Grace Bechtold at Bantam, and Tam, John Nelson, and Jane at Prentice-Hall. [...] There’s no need to go into all the complicated details here; it’s enough to say that the photos Bantam used in Seth Speaks were involved, especially the cover shot of Jane; as well as bids for Oversoul Seven between Pocket Books and Bantam; Jane’s fears that she’d end up committed for two more Seven books she hasn’t written yet; and various misunderstandings concerning ethics, expired option, and an offer to Jane to go to work for Simon & Schuster-Pocket Books, and to take Tam with her.

[...] Jane spoke to John Nelson this evening before the session; he called her from his place, after failing to reach her this afternoon. As far as we know, the set-to is cleared up now, Jane is free, etc. [...] Actually, Grace told Jane last week, and John this week, that the book is “a smashing success,” whatever that means, and is in its sixth printing. [...]

(John, in turn, called Pat unethical because she called Jane about the details of all of this, and then offered to take Jane away from Prentice-Hall. Both John and Grace are upset also because Pocket Books thought about using the same photo of Jane on the cover of their book—The Coming of Seth—that Bantam had used on the cover of their issue of Seth Speaks.)