“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] Since I have known your time it is meaningful for me, though it no longer hampers me. [...]

[...] Do you follow me?

(Now re my dream of July 27, 1968, involving my father and me.)

Our friend the artist (Van Elver; see the data last session regarding sepia) is not available this evening, but if you make the point of reminding me before sessions, I will see that we get more information for you.

(Here Seth refers to a painting I began yesterday, in line with approach two of the suggestions he gave me in the last, 456th session, I am following his suggestions and they are working well.)

(“From me or from Joseph? [...]

[...] Sitting down a bit later she said: “I’m trying to get back in,” meaning trance, “but that music downstairs bothers me.” [...]

Were I only his personality’s method of gaining revelationary knowledge (pause), then he should be content with that, recognizing his need of me in that endeavor. [...]

[...] When the lunch tray came, along with the cold ham plate Georgia had ordered for me, I wasn’t hungry. [...]

[...] She again could not tell me what their source was, although we were pretty sure the same things were involved — mostly her mother. [...]

(Carla helped Jane call me at 9:05 p.m., just as I was finishing this session. [...]

[...] One involved voices; another and more striking one involved my naming the exact item of clothing Jane purchased for me, unknown to me while I was at my job.

[...] The drawing on tracing paper was made by me, from instructions given to me by my boss, and is a schematic drawing to be traced onto Bristol board for final artwork.

[...] He said I have been particularly benefited, since they have the ability to open me up, whereas I had always thought Jane benefited most, because of her very warm relationship with Peggy. [...]

(Two additional notes to add to the above account: Seth told me we might have witnesses to the session scheduled for Wednesday, March 2, but he did not say how many and I did not ask. [...]

(A nurse and an aide met me at the door to 330 this noon and told me that they’d spent half an hour trying to get Jane comfortable. [...]

[...] I didn’t know what had set me off, really, though.)

[...] I read the session to her, and once again had to speak louder for her to hear me. [...]

[...] She asked me to get my notebook. [...] She began speaking, or dictating, to me in her own voice—not Seth’s, for instance—but it was wavering, choked with tears. [...]

(She was still half-crying with pain and upset, but told me to go out at 11:45. [...]

[...] “Odd thoughts for me, though, about ‘Israel.” [...]

[...] “I do not know whether she hated me or not. I guess she hated me.”

[...] She told me about a vivid dream she had last night, and I refer to an interpretation of the dream at the end of the session.

[...] I groped for words to express my anger, for watching my wife cry certainly aroused strong feelings within me. [...]

(Carla called for Jane at 9:30, and told me that Jane was again doing those motions. [...]

(Looking at me.) You act as a transmitter, Joseph. [...]

[...] It was this innate ability and knowledge, your fond (smile) Seth tells me, that prevented you from marrying until you met someone who would be able to help you along these lines.

Your Seth has helped me out here. [...]

[...] This effect symbolizes Jane and me at the bottom or base of the pyramid, with Seth in the middle and Seth’s entity, represented by the new voice, at the top or peak.

[...] Do you have an envelope for me?

(Her eyes still closed, Jane took the envelope from me for our 70th experiment, and held it up to her forehead with her right hand. [...]

These squares may be filled in; as buildings in a photograph would be picked up by me first as shapes, you see.

[...] Without seeing it to make absolutely sure, Jane and I are reasonably sure that the abstract Dr. Lodico has purchased from me was painted in October, 1964. [...]

(“I dreamed I was on a bed, Rob on one side of me and another man also. [...] Then, though I’m not sure, I think that the doctor reassured me, that only one baby was involved. [...] I was pleased that the delivery was so easy and painless for me.”)

This was simply to lead me up, or to lead Ruburt up, to the number six. I saw the number six twice, which led me to think it was significant. [...]

[...] Do you have a test for me, Joseph?

[...] It takes me a moment to change focus.

[...] With that preamble, let me continue then.

(To me:) You died as a young boy in an operation, however, in this life as you think of it. [...]

[...] (To me:) “Your” desire to live straddled the death of the child in an operation. [...]

[...] Her ears still rang, so loudly that she asked me if I heard the same sound. [...]

(Then Jane told me that last night Shawn Peterson had dropped the bottle of Oil of Olay, and thrown away the dispenser along with the broken glass. [...] For some reason this news served as a trigger to plunge me into a depressed mood of my own, which lasted for most of the afternoon. [...]

[...] I got the nurse to help me hoist her further up on the bed so she’d be more comfortable, and that seemed to help. [...]

[...] I’m sure of this much: a group of people were with me at a large round table. [...]

[...] I’m dancing at a swank dance floor with a younger man with dark darting eyes that now remind me of Frank Longwell, Jr. I know I’ve seen him once before and that he’s a thief. [...]

(The photograph of me, taken and dated by my father [Robert Sr.], has been kept in one of the Butts family albums for 53 years. [...] In blurred focus behind me an unknown teen-age girl sits on a swing that’s suspended from a tree limb, and an empty wicker stroller-type carriage [mine?] stands beside her. [...]

[...] The speed of her delivery for Seth has been average, which to me means that I’d been able to just comfortably keep up with my verbatim “shorthand” notes. Jane remembered little of what she’d said, yet now she felt the emotional impact of the material in her stomach — the reaction she often gets, she told me, when the information is of a personal or “charged” nature.

(Before the session I showed Jane a childhood photograph of herself, and one of me. [...]

[...] Many years later she was to tell me, “My mother hated that woman.” [...]

Ruburt did not call me, and yet certain elements in his inner mind spontaneously came to my attention. It occurred to me that perhaps you did not know the importance of the material, or found it difficult to pick out its most distinguishing and valuable points.

[...] She came to the studio to tell me this, and that she also received the thought, evidently from Seth, that Donald Wollheim, her editor at Ace Books, could or would write the introduction for Book One.

[...] In a few moments she returned and asked me to bring my notebook to the living room when I finished cleaning up, which would take a few minutes.

[...] Any divergence of opinion between Ruburt and yourself may be taken to me if such arises. [...]

[...] His profile was to me. [...] He reminded me somewhat of Bill Macdonnel's father, but it was not him. [...]

I am fully aware that your landlord and friend has asked me to locate his old thermostat cover.

Most of all in this session, I merely intend to congratulate you both for your perseverance, and I hope you will congratulate me for mine. [...]

I will never cease to enjoy the tricky note of your voice when you are trying to catch me off guard. [...]

[...] I am a unique, worthy creature in the natural world, which everywhere surrounds me, gives me sustenance, and reminds me of the greater source from which I myself and the world both emerge. My body is delightfully suited to its environment, and comes to me, again, from that unknown source which shows itself through all of the events of the physical world.”

Sometimes the artist in me visually comes to the aid of the writer by laying out pages of material and notes side by side upon a table or two. [...] This process is always very challenging and thrilling to me. [...] This method also helps greatly in counteracting that initial impatience the artist part of me strongly feels when my writer self comes upon a complex situation.

(“That constant book stuff can get confining, though,” she said, then reminded me that Seth — with her obvious consent — had plunged into Mass Events only a couple of weeks after finishing Psyche. [...]

[...] In the most basic of terms, however, inoculations do no good, either, though I am aware that medical history would seem to contradict me.

[...] I remember I was talking as Seth, and I looked over and Billy was giving me an entirely different look than he’d ever given me before. [...] He just looked at me like I was an entirely different person—either that, or I perceived him differently in trance.”

[...] A line in it stayed with me, so that I read it over this afternoon. [...] Some of it concerned her holding back on her own success for fear that my lack of success would be painful to me, compared to her achievements. [...]

(For perhaps fifteen minutes after he’d jumped up in Jane’s chair, Billy had descended from that spot and curled himself up against me as I sat taking notes on the couch. [...]

[...] What I am as you have known me is legitimate. I go beyond the apparent boundaries of that self by which you have known me, but it is that self that could communicate with you before you could know anymore about my reality or understand that I might be more. [...]

[...] It is not up to you to decide which way is best, nor even to me. [...]

[...] For if you will forgive me, the material is much more significant because it is backed up (deeper voice) by someone who is no longer within your system.

(To me:) Because you are so drawn to Ruburt, there is the struggle to actualize your emotions toward him in daily life. [...]

(By now, speaking, Jane had fallen into a mode of dictating to me as I wrote; this was different than her simply telling me something in ordinary terms. It wasn’t Seth speaking, but her own delivery was quite precise and unhesitating, and she paused just as Seth did to give me time to write down her words. [...]

[...] By session time they were somewhat diminished, but were very inhibiting during the day, making me hesitate to do the things I’d ordinarily do without a second thought, such as drive to the post office to mail Jane’s intro for Sue’s book Conversations With Seth. [...]

[...] I told her to do as she pleased; I hadn’t asked her to have Seth say anything about me. [...]

[...] Jane came out of trance quickly, but before I could even tell her how good I thought the session was, she now told me that lately she’s been picking up from Seth that animal consciousness is turned inward to form the civilization of nature, and that ours is turned outward into our physical civilizations—but that ours have to be built upon that civilization of nature. [...]