“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

5. This “margin of safety” between my mother and me is beautifully illustrated in my dream of two nights ago. [...] Here’s the relevant portion of the description I wrote for Through My Eyes: “Then I saw my mother [Stella] between my brother Linden and his wife, all separated each from the other a little bit, all walking obliquely toward me across a featureless plain. [...] My mother didn’t speak to me or look directly at me; like the others, she faced just past my left shoulder.

(“It sure doesn’t start out like a book to me,” Jane said. [...] Maybe this time he’s going to go ahead and do it his own way … I can honestly say that the title was completely unknown to me.” [...]

[...] I know I created my dream image of her to make our communication understandable to me — yet I felt that she was alive, in our terms and in hers. My mother was obviously in control of her faculties, even though she appeared to be a little distraught … The fact that she looked past me speaks of some sort of barrier, or distance, between us even in the dream state. [...]

[...] “The material doesn’t seem like a book, but when I started getting stuff in my sleep after the last two sessions, I did wonder …” I had to laugh: She hadn’t mentioned her own suspicions to me. [...]

[...] My high point was receiving the little book of poems and sketches she’d made for me. [I hadn’t created anything like that for her, though.] When Jane read her poetry to me I strongly felt once again her innocence and perception: “The universe keeps turning into us….” [...]

[...] It would be quite improbable for you, Joseph (as Seth calls me), to suddenly turn into a tailor, for example, for none of your choices with probabilities have led toward such an action.

I gave you some New Year’s resolutions last year, and it seems to me (with some irony) that they could be resurrected.

(To me:) Your mother did not simply choose to believe, in her old age, in a different past than the one that was accepted by the family—she effectively changed probabilities. [...]

[...] These checked out in physical reality and are recorded in my book, The Seth Material. Some of these episodes concerned strangers who had written to me. [...] Such instances did much to convince me that projections were not just imaginative dramatizations.

[...] This frightened me more than the forward flight. This time, there was a strange, very loud noise, like the magnified twang of a rubber band or cable that seemed to be reeling me back in. [...]

[...] A woman beckoned to me. [...] I fell into a normal dream which was also forgotten before the alarm awakened me.

[...] Someone told me that most of our cherished ideas about the nature of reality were completely wrong. [...] Someone was guiding me, I believe.”

[...] Now, Ruburt assembles me, or allows me to assemble myself, in a way that will be recognizable to you; but regardless of this assembling, I exist in an independent manner, and with the past of which I have spoken.

[...] It has enough camouflage pattern to enable me to make contact, but not so much as to distort me out of all recognition. [...]

[...] None of the communications from me have been in any way conducive to a development toward mental or emotional instability. [...]

I also do not take my responsibilities lightly, and I feel to a great degree responsible for you, and for any results coming from your communications with me. [...]

[...] Driving or gliding along river road just north of Chemung NY, with fence on my right so that I could not get off the road, I saw sweeping down the hill some distance ahead of me a big tractor-trailer truck—on the wrong side of the road. This experience had duration enough for me to consider the best way to avoid it. It did not swerve about, merely headed straight for me until it loomed up enormously right in front of me. [...]

(At my request, Jane repeated the word psychio-physical for me. [...]

Here we run into something that will be difficult for me to explain to you. [...]

(Later, Jane told me that as she was delivering this material aloud, she also contained within another parallel channel of thought from Seth, as she often does. [...]

[...] “Especially without telling me.” [...] And all of this applies to me as much as it does to you, in case you think I’m setting myself up in a superior position.” [...]

[...] Margaret Bumbalo had asked me over for a drink when I got home, but I was in no hurry. [...]

[...] “It’s me.” [...]

[...] But someday we will have jokes that are not on me. You have not heard me laugh yet. [...]

(The idea for it had come to me one day and I had begun work on it at once. In view of some rather odd sensations it had engendered within me I had thought it might refer to Seth, or myself in a previous life. [...]

We will not involve ourselves with any deep and weighty matters this evening, and you may slow me down, Joseph, when you prefer. [...]

I was speaking of those questions which our guest asks herself, and these are the questions that she subconsciously would like me to answer. [...]

[...] Smiling at me, he held out his right hand toward me. [...]

[...] She saw me back out of the garage as usual. [...] Nor does she watch me leave for work. [...]

[...] When Jane described her dream to me I had mistakenly taken it for granted that Helen McIlwain was still alive.)

Ruburt is trying not to block me, but there is some difficulty, which we will attempt to overcome.

(Jane called me last night — forgot to tell me Debbie Harris visited.

When I am jovial and when you know me as I am, realize that I have been what I am for a long time—with alterations and changes and developments. And that as you sit here before me, you are far more than you know. [...] And that as you challenge me, so shall you be challenged. [...]

[...] I will not lead those who would follow me blindly. [...]

[...] Don’t speak to me of youth and age. [...]

Will you let me address a few words to you? [...] Far be it from me to speak to you if you would rather not hear what I have to say. [...]

[...] The rest will follow as you are ready for it and if you rush up in rage against me then I will leave Ruburt to face it. [...]

Now, I will let you all take a break, and I will let our friend over here (to Florence) think that because of her suggestions she drew me out. [...]

[...] Now it is easy for me to say this, but you can be aware of it in your experience if you choose, but he has been watching out for you and many of the decisions you have made, including the purchase of your house, have been overseen by him though he encouraged you to make the decision on your own. [...]

[...] Read something in the paper about concentration on illness causing pain, and that reminded me of some ideas I had last night. [...] I know this new book has application to me most practically, too, giving methods of breaking out of my own patterns.² Could feel the bulk and immediacy of the book, but also frustrated that what I’ve got down is so little and sketchy — WHEN IT’S ALREADY HERE. [...]

[...] Jane wrote at the time, then told me, that she almost felt “the book could be Personal Reality Number Two.” [...]

[...] Upon awakening, she told me that she remembered receiving hints about the new possible book in two dreams during the previous week. [...]

[...] I can’t tell you how frustrated — how blocked — this made me feel at the time.

(At the time Rebellers was published, I was jealous, but it took me some time to learn this. [...] In fact, it was the memory of the success of that episode that led me to this morning’s session.)

[...] You follow me here.

(“They don’t to me.” [...]

[...] The question had occurred to me during last night, I believe, but I had forgotten it until now.

[...] I am speaking because you wanted me to attend class this evening. [...]

[...] Do you follow me? [...]

[...] Do not look at me like that. [...]

[...] Now, give me a moment. [...]

[...] I called him; whereupon he chose to curl up beside me on the couch instead.

[...] Later, she told me, Seth waited with “affectionate amusement” for the episode to resolve itself.)

[...] What information and knowledge I have I try to give to you through Ruburt and Joseph (pause), who are parts of me in your space and time. [...]

[...] I felt the same way about Seth Speaks; the end always shocks me.” [...]

(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. [...] 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

[...] Once you made up your minds to, you found your house — with characteristic swiftness, let me add, and you avoided several pitfalls.

For you, Joseph (as Seth calls me), the place is reminiscent. [...]

[...] She told me now, however, that she was entering a relaxed state. [...]

[...] During the day and particularly at night, the ligaments in right side of my neck definitely loosened; giving me some new neck and head motions that are quite obvious to me; the entire right side seemed to be loosening.

(Out on the porch tonight off and on I kept getting stuff from Seth but so normally and smoothly that only something Rob said later made me remember. [...]

[...] Any changes in routine for me are good.

[...] Part of my paragraph of commentary following the 724th session, in Volume 2, fits in here: “As he [Seth] quite humorously commented in the 14th session for January 8, 1964, ‘… for you have no idea of the difficulties involved in explaining time to someone who must take time to understand the explanation.’ Yet Seth’s simultaneous time isn’t an absolute, for, as he also told us in that session: ‘While I am not affected by time on your plane, I am affected by something resembling time on my plane … To me time can be manipulated, used at leisure and examined. To me your time is a vehicle, one of several by which I can enter your awareness. It is therefore still a reality of some kind to me [my emphasis]. [...]

[...] In the first years of my mediumship Seth’s voice and accent seemed very odd to me, whether I heard myself speaking for him during sessions or listened to tapes. [...] Although I’ve read “Unknown” Reality since it was finished, and had looked portions of it over during the time of its production, it seems alien to me in the strangest fashion.

“When I get this far in my own thinking, a peculiar acceleration seizes me. My body grows very relaxed, but my mind has a strange feeling of motion as if something I’m trying to comprehend is going past me too fast to follow; yet I keep trying to twirl faster myself to catch up. [...]

[...] Let me here reinforce that validity. Let me reinforce my faith in your innate ability to find joyful acquiescence, and to rise above any problems that you have. [...]

[...] When I fell in love with Rob, my joy served to double the underlying sense of tragedy I felt, as if death mocked me all the more by making life twice as precious. I saw each day bringing me closer to a total extinction that I could hardly imagine, but which I resented with growing vehemence.

[...] The image in the doorway is indeed my own, though there is bound to be a distortion in Mark’s perception of me. It is through the Inner Senses that he perceives me, and this data he then attempts to transform into information that can be physically perceived.”

[...] When I said that he would join me in a demonstration, I meant that he would join me in a demonstration.”

This simple statement alone liberated Rob and me from all kinds of preconceptions that had inhibited our daily lives.