“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(11:01.) The newspapers act as hypnotic suggestion of a potent kind. There is no one present who can confirm the newspaper’s evidence. You cannot ask questions of a newspaper, or of a news program. The entire pattern of these latest sessions deals with your inner reactions to your beliefs about yourselves and the world. Tonight I am dealing with a specific area. To some extent, however. These newspaper beliefs shut you off from full utilization from Framework 2’s potency.

For the newspapers also act in a suggestive fashion, further programming your expectations. In a way you organize your physical experience as you do your inner life, through association, through emotional association. I am not simple speaking of sensationalism in newspapers or on TV. When you read the news or hear it, however, because of cultural beliefs you are programmed to behave in a certain fashion, in a fashion that validates, seemingly, the concepts of Freud and Darwin, and the most unfortunate aspects of Christian pessimism.

History is written according to the present beliefs of a historian in his time. As you know, your western world followed its own mixture of Christianity, Darwinism, and Freudian psychology. Because those ideas still are largely in the mainstream of your society, your television news, newspapers, and magazines are invisibly slanted. The news is invisibly organized to fit certain patterns, so that when you read or hear it, it carries the seemingly indelible mark, confirming the basic beliefs of the culture.

I am not speaking strictly of political parties or political newspapers, or of any specialized journals or magazines, but of the overall pattern displayed by all of your mass communications. You can see easily, however, the highly specialized, intensified view of the world that is apparent in scientific journals. These are in sharp conflict with, for example, religious journals. If you look you can easily become aware of these specialized worlds.

(At the end of Seth’s second try at the envelope data, he once again came up with the newspaper connection: “Still, there seems to be a newspaper connection. [...] As I worked with the materials on the newspapers, I wondered whether it was such a good idea, fearing that perhaps the acrylic glue I was using might dissolve the black printing ink enough to cause it to dirty the white burlap I was handling. [...] I do not know if Seth referred to this, or merely black ink being connected with newspapers.

(The newspaper connection also developed because on the front page of today’s paper for June 20th, was the story of a local woman being murdered with a knife. So although I used newspapers while developing the envelope object, I couldn’t have used the particular newspaper which carried the murder story, since this news developed two days later. [...]

[...] Sharp, something sharp… Ruburt thinks of a newspaper article, about a murder.” [...] There can be a direct connection with the envelope object, and a newspaper connection; it seems that both are somewhat distorted, and that one perhaps influenced the other.

Ruburt thinks of a newspaper article, about a murder. [...]

[...] “This could be a result of the newspaper connection. [...] Possibly Leonard’s name arose here because of the earlier newspaper data which calls the Gallaghers to mind. Leonard does have a newspaper connection with Jane and me, in that he obtains the New York Times at work, then gives it to us each day after he finishes reading it. [...] His name may have arisen in this data however through distortion, since it would appear the Gallaghers have a more direct newspaper connection with the object, through me.

[...] A connection with newspaper also.

This could be a result of the newspaper connection. [...]

(“A connection with newspaper also.” [...]

(“I wish there were words to use besides clairvoyance or precognition,” I said, since I was somewhat reluctant to attach them to the newspaper experience. [...] A copy of my newspaper experience is attached to this session.¹

(Just before we sat for the session Jane finished reading my account of my “light of the universe” experience of last Sunday evening, September 21, and my account of the experience involving … clairvoyance … precognition … that I’d had at naptime today, involving my idea for a novel and an article in tonight’s Star-Gazette, Elmira’s daily newspaper. [...]

The events themselves discussed in the newspaper article point up the same kind of magical affiliations. [...]

[...] It was momentarily free of limiting beliefs, and it naturally used — and chose to use — the magical approach to answer what was a very simple, now-forgotten intellectual question: What might be in today’s newspaper?

“Great discrimination is used so that, for example, one newspaper item is noticed over others because a certain portion of that item represents some of the dream’s message. [...]

[...] One way or another, however, you will hit upon some kind of situation—a portion of a TV drama, perhaps—in which a tire is blown; or you will see an item of that nature in the newspaper, or you will hear a story, told directly or indirectly about the same kind of dilemma. [...]

[...] In my studio was a pile of old newspapers. [...]

[...] Then I picked up the section from which the object had been taken, my eyes closed, groped over to a floor-to-ceiling bookcase in the studio, and placed the newspaper on a high shelf so that I would not see it ordinarily.

(After the experiment was over Jane opened the envelopes, and I picked up the newspaper from which the object had been taken. [...]

[...] There is a 42 on page 12 of the newspaper page from which the object is taken. [...]

[...] I write ‘were’ out of habit, because I have this delightful feeling that my printing, writing, and newspaper interests now are what led me to be drawn to the same things back then, even as my work there caused me to be interested in the same things now — an exchange across the board.

[...] This is hard to specify, but he had the same feeling I have now about newspapers — the daily spreading out of ideas, and the kind of tremendous power behind that ability … I can see that corner of his shop/work area clearly in a half-light, illuminated by a candle in an enclosed mesh lantern sitting on a tabletop. [...]

[...] Now she’s co-editor of a weekly newspaper published in a small town north of Elmira. [...]

(Seth then launched into a long topic involving Peggy, her job at the newspaper, and another girl there. [...]

(Seth now began in some detail on the situation at the local newspaper.)

[...] At your newspaper. [...]

[...] Peg now questioned Seth further about the Chinese girl at the newspaper.)

[...] Bill said the description fits the stereotyper at the newspaper, and that the two of them discussed the ad this evening. [...] I have not been inside the newspaper building since Jane and I moved here five years ago.

[...] Bill told us that he would have to leave for a few minutes to pick up an advertisement at the bus terminal and take it to the newspaper office, the Star-Gazette, where he works. [...]

[...] I seemed to pick up impressions of Bill at the newspaper office, and follow him as he went about his chores. [...]

[...] On entering the newspaper building Bill went into one particular office and left, making a sudden and sharp turn to go upstairs.

(Yesterday, in the magazine section of a leading metropolitan newspaper, Jane and I read a long article on the evolution of ancient man — “ancient” here meaning “true man” at least 2.5 million to 3 million years old. [...]

(Portions of the article in yesterday’s newspaper, I should add, dealt with the recent discoveries of skeletal fragments in East Africa that indicate the coexistence of several varieties of ancient man and preman; the latter being creatures who looked rather human but whose brains, it is believed, remained apelike. [...]

Great discrimination is used, so that, for example, certain portions of one newspaper item is noticed over others because that item represents some of the dream’s message. [...]

[...] Or you will see an item of that nature in the newspaper, or you will hear a story, told directly or indirectly about the same kind of dilemma. [...]

[...] “Like you’ll come across something in a TV drama, or see it in a newspaper or hear about it, and it has quite a charge for you—only you’ll never connect it up with the dream you might have had the night before.”

[...] The short story referred to above was reported on a TV program about Three Mile Island: Jane and I caught a glimpse of, I believe, a local newspaper or magazine in the Harrisburg area that had printed a short story about a nuclear accident at that plant, on the same day that the troubles began at Three Mile Island. [...]

(Our region is supposed to be outside the danger zone — yet we see conflicting newspaper reports about whether the prevailing wind currents would make us vulnerable to the after-effects of a meltdown. [...]

“Great discrimination is used to do that; for example, one newspaper item is noticed over others because a certain portion of that item represents some of the dream’s message. [...]

[...] Or you will see an item of that nature in the newspaper, or you will hear a story, told directly or indirectly about the same kind of dilemma. [...]

(Rough copy of the newspaper article used as the envelope object, in the 77th experiment in the 302nd session, for November 21,1966.)

(Rough copy of the back of the newspaper article.)

(Back copy of the newspaper page.)

[...] You read newspapers and keep in constant physical communication with others of your kind. [...] The newspapers are not the events they discuss, though they are their own kind of events. [...]

Some of your dreams are like newspaper stories, informing you of events that have happened in other portions of the psyche. [...]

(The object for the 77th envelope experiment was a copy of an article from The Saratogian, the daily newspaper of Saratoga Springs, NY; it was printed in September, 1950 and was saved by Jane as a souvenir, and also because she wrote it. [...]

[...] I picked this item after finding it lost among some newspapers, and about to be thrown out. [...]

[...] Jane wrote it, since she had a part-time job with the newspaper while attending Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. [...]

[...] The object, being a newspaper item, contains printing and consequently is closely related to a note.

[...] He and his boss, Cove Hoover, were driving home from a yearly outing for newspaper staff on Seneca Lake; Bill driving. [...]

[...] Jane at once interpreted this data as referring to the staircase she must climb in order to reach Peggy Gallagher’s office, on the second floor at the newspaper office where Peggy works. [...]

[...] Bill Gallagher’s facetious term for the local newspaper office, where he also works, is the Garden of Gethsemane—hence such religious connections in the poem used as object. [...]

[...] As explained on the last page, Bill Gallagher calls his place of employment, the newspaper office, the “Garden of Gethsemane.” [...]

[...] Very briefly, it concerns the behavior of a local psychiatrist and his wife—one of those continuing affairs that have been well known locally for some time, yet never getting into the newspaper.

(Timothy Foote described his learning about the healings at Lourdes, France, while he was an overseas newspaper correspondent, etc.)

(Jane told me after the session that this quote refers to a well-known newspaper story of some years ago.)

(Here Seth refers to Bill, who leaves for Syracuse tomorrow on a business trip for the Elmira newspaper.)

[...] Both Peg and Bill mentioned a chaotic state existing at the newspaper office where they work, though Bill said this was merely the result of a natural evolution of policies perhaps. [...]