“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] I realize more and more that life’s experience is played out in a framework that stretches between life’s contrasts. [...]

There is no doubt that I was caught between life’s contrasts, and only too aware of the endless questions that came to mind. [...]

[...] And if spontaneous order was such a vital ingredient in the workings of the universe, then what was I doing trying to shut it down in my own daily life?

Value fulfillment is the largest issue here, both with Seth’s book and my own experience, and if I really understood what Seth was saying in this book, I would not have needed to undergo such an uncomfortable drama in my daily life.

(You had a brief life as twins... Some definite clear-cut divisions within yourself have to do with this life when you were one of two... [...] This division is bringing up memories subconsciously, in this past life where there was this division between you and your brother.

[...] and if he cut loose he would be too panic-stricken to be an independent thinker leading to a dilemma...which you reached just after 30 in this life.... [...]

[...] But many people look to those outside themselves — psychics, doctors, psychiatrists, priests, ministers, friends — for the answers to overall life situations, and in so doing they deny their own abilities of self-understanding and growth.

You will find yourself exaggerating the negative aspects of your life, and the positive sides of other people’s experiences. [...]

[...] When you ask another to tell you the direction of your life, then to some extent you keep from yourself the realization that you yourself possess it. [...]

[...] (See Chapter Seven.) This is the life you are living! [...]

[...] The very climate and vegetation may vary considerably, and yet all life and vegetation within the area are interrelated. Each layer of life that composes the mountain —

[...] In the same way, when you look “backward” into the psyche the life you may indistinctly view — the past life — is already vanished. [...]

[...] They exist simultaneously with your own life, even as the strata of rock exist simultaneously with the mountain.

(“Is ‘life’ the word you want used there?” This is one of the few times I’ve interrupted Seth during his presentation of “Unknown” Reality.)

[...] The quality of life is all-important. [...] They died naturally, that is, and wholeheartedly, and were not torn between life and death.

You might decide, for example, to put all of your eggs in one basket in one life, knowing full well that in another you are taking a seemingly appropriate course of action. This is not the only life you will know. [...]

Your own difficulties after shoveling become exaggerated because you also make a division between what you think of as your own mental life as opposed to the world’s physical orientation, as if in some way mental life makes you unfit for physical activity. [...]

The speakers operate in individual capacity, and yet they affect mass life conditions, for they can point out needed alterations in, say, a political system long before this is apparent. [...]

You had a brief life as twins—some definite clear-cut divisions within yourself, have to do with this life when you were one of two—one going one way, and one going the other—one twin had a strong leaning toward military things—a soldier—the organization of the church now serves the same purpose, I believe—security within the organization—the twin who was in the military found his sense of identity as a soldier within the system, but he had great faith in the system—in what he was doing—the other twin was more given to a statesman-like sort of thing—and was in fact an orator, although he had another profession—it included oration to people—the two of you had a very strong telepathic relationship—and this time the church has provided the same kind of organization—you sort of resented the fact that this twin brother of yours had this organization in which he found support and in which he felt so a part because he was absolutely certain of the aims and goals of the organization and he was a good soldier within it—and at that time you envied him that security and that sense of identity within the system in which he believed. [...] The other brother was battling for what the organization wanted, and served the organization well—you are now battling the things the organization wants and you feel the division—this division is bringing up memories subconsciously, in this past life where there was this division between you and your brother. [...]

[...] His intellectual freedom, he feels, exists only so long as it is cushioned by the feeling of security of the organization—and if he cut loose he would be too panic-stricken to be an independent thinker, leading to a dilemma which you reached just after 30 in this life. [...]

[...] Surely lives are as important as paintings, and as such multidimensional creations far outlast the paintings that are representations of the life you know.

When you have completed a life then it is as if you have finished a living portrait of yourself, using the mediums of space and time. [...]

[...] Some of the Old Masters were adept at painting scenes of violence, warfare, sagas, with dark and dreary atmospheres, yet each so filled at the same time with life and vitality that the canvases themselves seemed alive. [...]

[...] Those particular aspirations will lead you, and are leading you, to the realization that life itself is an art, composed of the same ingredients of inner inspiration, spontaneity and conscious organization and discrimination.

[...] Since through my internal vision I evidently looked in upon a particular past life of my own, however unaware I was of what I was doing, it seems that the knowledge of that existence may not be too deeply buried within my psyche. I might try jogging my memory through suggestion, to see what else about that life I can recall. It would also be interesting to see whether the same technique could help me tune in to my future in this life.

Finally, the incredibly complex physical assemblage of the human being — or of any organism, to confine ourselves to just “living” entities — always reminds me that according to evolutionary theory life on earth arose by chance alone. We must remember that through Darwinism or Neo-Darwinism science tells us that life has no creative design, or any purpose, behind it; and that, moreover, this ineffable quality called “life” originated (more than 3.4 billion years ago) in a single fortuitous chance combination of certain atoms and molecules in a tidal pool, say, somewhere on the face of the planet….

[...] At the same time your own physical being knows better, and basically cannot accept such a concept.² So in daily life you may project this idea of unworth outward onto another person, who seems then to be your enemy; or upon another nation. [...]

In any case, in your private life you may hardly ever encounter your belief in your own unworth, or evil. [...]

[...] Nothing in the stream of life is wasted, and everything, whether in your system of reality or not, is in the stream of life. [...]

[...] Your “purpose” is to bring those diverse aspects together, to form them into your own kind of artistic production—to wed in your life and art those seemingly diverse qualities of spontaneity and order, spareness and abundance, beloved detail and wholeness, and to form in your life and art a new kind of synthesis.

When a masterpiece is created everything else is forgotten, and so it is with life situations. [...] In life you work with many “underpaintings” at once—and while it may seem at any given level that one underpainting lacks or is weak, later it will be seen as an important part of the whole.

[...] The rich unconscious is wasteful in those terms, since it seems to you that it contains memories and sensations that are not used in practical everyday life.

(This afternoon and evening, and somewhat to my surprise, Jane has been talking about discussing her physical symptoms in her new book, God of Jane. I thought her changed attitude stemmed from her long phone conversation with Tristine Rainer, of Dan Curtis Associates, a television production company that wants to option her life story. [See the notes for the deleted session for August 20, 1979.] They wrote August 8. If her life story were ever to be filmed, the symptoms would have to be considered, we found ourselves thinking. [...]

[...] You sensed the shape of the probability that is now your life, that is now your life together (intently). [...]

(10:10.) Again, in a way (underlined), you have given a second life to many other people. [...] Some get through easier or quicker than others, and a belief in the need for protection has been the most stubborn lingering belief from Ruburt’s past in this life. [...]

[...] Those events were necessary, or events very much like them, if, granting probabilities, the two of you were eager to have years of satisfying life and work. [...]

[...] Dreaming provides all the conditions of life and death, therefore — a fact that often frightens the waking self. But here is a creative mixture: the perceptive organizations from which prosaically tuned conscious life emerges. [...]

(11:59.) Because that state is also connected with waking life, you also take into it many of the elements of your daily existence, so that your recalled dreams are often cast in fairly conventionalized terms. [...] Yet any real education must take into consideration the learning processes within dreams, and no one can hope to glimpse the nature of the psyche without encouraging dream experience, recall, and the creative use of dream education in waking life.

He is reminding you of life’s natural spontaneous creativity — the source of your own creativity, purposes, and intents. So that life can intrude upon your art (with amusement).

[...] Your experience changes constantly, and so does the intimate context of your life — but you concentrate upon points of order, in your terms, that actually serve to scale down the context of your experience to make it more comprehensible. [...]

Once more, as I’ve done often in recent years, I expressed the hope to myself that in another probable reality very similar to this one I opted for the outdoor life in a much stronger way—even to living outside night and day for most of the year. [...] In that probable life I use a tent sometimes, but I cook and sleep outside as much as possible, except in the worst weather. What a different life! [...] Not that I want to copy Cézanne, for instance [I couldn’t even if I wanted to], but in that other reality I too chose to live the natural life in a more naive or clear-eyed manner—to sublimate myself before nature while at the same time trying to become master of whatever means of expression I can achieve.

I often consider those insights when observing both the wild and domesticated animal life, as well as the bird life, around the hill house. [...] I mentioned the guilt Jane and I feel because we’re depriving the cats of their reproductive roles in life, and because we don’t let them run free in the environment. [...]

[...] But no matter what we may accomplish as a species, or how far we may travel, in those terms we started out utterly dependent upon our earth, with its fantastic variety of resources and life forms. [...] I’ve come to believe that the predominantly outdoor life would give me a certain understanding of our temporal and spiritual worlds impossible to grasp otherwise, and that my painting would inevitably mirror that greater comprehension. [...] Of course, what I’m really stressing here is living the independent life as much as possible within our ever-more-complicated national and world cultures. [...]

[...] It’s just as foolish for those who are religious, even though they outnumber the scientists by far, to expect most scientists to embrace religion, to surrender their agnosticism or atheism, to give up their mechanistic, reductionist views of life—their attempts to use a series of “logical” steps to reduce the human being, say, to his or her ever-lower components, right down to the atomic level. [...] Nor can scientists tell us, any better than the religious-minded can, what life itself is, or where “it” came from, or where “it” may be going.

People have a biologically built-in knowledge that life has meaning. [...] A belief in life’s meaning is a necessity on the part of your species.

[...] Your greatest achievements have been produced by civilizations during those times when man had the greatest faith in the meaningfulness of life in general, and in the meaningfulness of the individual within life’s framework.

A scientist who would threaten the very survival of life on the planet in order to increase life’s conveniences (underlined) is, however, truly displaying ludicrous behavior (with irony).

(Pause.) You are, I hope, coming toward a time of greater psychological synthesis, so that the intuitions and reasoning abilities work together in a much more smooth fashion, so that emotional and intuitive knowledge regarding the meaningfulness of life can find clearer precision and expression, as the intellect is taught—as the intellect is taught—to use its faculties in a far less restricted manner.

[...] Your civilizations are your splendid, creative, exterior renditions of the inner social groupings of the cells of the body, and the cooperative processes of nature that give you physical life. [...]

(9:42.) You do not dwell upon the unfortunate conditions in your environment, but you do take steps in your own life to express your ideals in whatever way is given. [...]

[...] If you accept the rightness of your life in the universe, then your ideals will be those in keeping with your nature. [...]

[...] If you do not trust the nature of your impulses, then you do not trust the nature of your life, the nature of the universe, or the nature of your own being.

[...] Life is to be pursued at all costs—not because it is innately meaningful, but because it is the only game going, and it is a game of chance at best. One life is all you have, and that one is everywhere beset by the threat of illness, disaster, and war—and if you escape such drastic circumstances, then you are still left with a life that is the result of no more than lifeless elements briefly coming into a consciousness and vitality that is bound to end.

[...] If life itself is seen scientifically as having no real meaning, then suffering, of course, must also be seen as meaningless. The individual becomes a victim of chance insofar as his birth, the events of his life, and his death are concerned. [...]

[...] As human creatures you accept the conditions of life. [...] You are born into belief systems as you are born into physical centuries, and part of the entire picture is the freedom of interpreting the experiences of life in multitudinous fashions (all intently). The meaning, nature, dignity or shame of suffering will be interpreted according to your systems of belief. [...]

[...] He has a passion for neatness and the well-ordered life. [...]

Nor can solar energy be thought of as the agent that directly turned nonliving matter into its living counterpart; in those terms, life required its intermediate molecules, which sunlight is not able to construct. Life needs protein in order to “be,” and to sustain it through metabolism — then it can use solar energy! Darwin’s theory that life arose by chance poses a basic contradiction: What made the protein that sustains the processes of life, before that life was present to make the protein?

If we must speak in terms of continuity, which I regret, then in those terms you could say that life in the physical universe, on your planet, “began” spontaneously in a given number of species at the same time. [...] That “breakthrough” cannot be logically explained, but only compared to, say, an illumination — that is, a light occurring everywhere at once, that became a medium for life as you define it. It had nothing to do with the propensity of certain kinds of cells to reproduce — [all cells are] imbued with the “drive” for value fulfillment — but with an overall illumination that set the conditions in which life was possible as you think of it; and at that imaginary, hypothetical point, all species became latent. [...]

[...] At the same time, we take note of the latest efforts of biological researchers to explain how, millions of years ago, a primitive DNA molecule could begin to manufacture the protein upon which life “rides,” and thus get around the contradiction posed in Note 8: What made the protein that sustains the processes of life, before that life was present to make the protein? [...]

[...] These activities certainly represent evolution through conscious intent, guided by the same creature who insists that no sort of consciousness could have been responsible for the origin or development of “life,” let alone the “dead” matter of his planet. Not only that: We read that even now in his laboratories man is trying hard to create some of that life itself. This is always done, of course, with the idea that the right combination of simple ingredients (water, methane, ammonia, et al.) in the test tube, stimulated by the right kind of energy under just the right conditions, will automatically produce life. [...]

[...] We can try to mold it, to make it conform or behave, but each life has a life of its own. [...] My wife’s life and work show that we can even create challenges and goals before birth, then in physical life plunge into fulfilling those qualities as we don flesh and clothing and beliefs. [...]

[...] Not only about Jane’s fine ability to speak in a trance or dissociated state for Seth, that “energy personality essence,” as he calls himself, but about all of the vastly complicated challenges that can, and do, arise in the course of a human life.

[...] Surely Jane’s life shows this, and in ways that neither of us were even remotely aware of consciously when we married 42 years ago.

[...] It seems to such youngsters that the pinnacle of life is just at hand, to last only briefly, and then to be snatched away. Undue stress is laid upon youthful beauty and youthful achievement, so that it appears that all of the rest of life’s activities must suffer by contrast.

The body often wears out because it has been used less and less — and that is because little study has been given to the true capabilities of the healthy physical body in the later years of life. That period also contains certain rhythms in which normal healing processes are highly accelerated, and the life force itself does not wear out or lessen within a body. [...]

Those particular beliefs actually take hold in young adults, so that it seems that all of life is meant to come to its fullest flower in young adulthood, and then from that prestigious position fall quicker and quicker into disuse and disarray.

We will have more to say concerning older people and their ways of life, and also discuss the many beliefs and ideas that can come almost immediately to their aid. [...]

(Long pause.) When you are born you possess a group of attitudes toward yourself and toward life. [...] They are also important in every period of your life. You can see (long pause) the results in life all about you, though in animals or plants these are experienced as a matter of feelings rather than, say, as thoughts or attitudes.

[...] These are actually composed of inbred psychological information as necessary and vital to your life as the data transmitted by your genes and chromosomes. [...]

[...] Here, however, we will deal primarily with those inner predispositions that encourage life and vitality.

(I told Jane that Seth’s opening line for Chapter 2, about possessing a group of attitudes toward oneself and toward life, at birth, runs directly counter to establishment theory that the newborn is like a blank slate, to be imprinted through teaching and experience. [...]

(“Frank Watts, where do souls go after they leave this life?”)

(“Can you give a life reading for me?”)

(“In which life was I a female?”)

(“Did you know me in that life, Frank Watts?”)