“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The envelope object for tonight’s 35th experiment was a beer coaster that I picked up from our table last Saturday evening, at our favorite dining and dancing establishment here in Elmira. [...]

[...] My introductory notes contain a reference to Jane and me borrowing a Ouija board from our landlord “in the fall of 1963,” which compares with the date given by Seth this evening, of September 10,1963. The notes refer to our attempts to use the board early in November 1963 also, without success.)

[...] Our progress will be clear to those who read our records. [...]

[...] Jane and I felt the need to rest and vary our routine. [...]

[...] If we consider the universe as a white hole — our exterior universe of sense — we at least have a theoretical framework that reconciles our inner and outer activity, our physical and spiritual or psychic experience; and the apparent dilemma between a simultaneous present in which all events happen at once, and our daily experience in which we seem to progress through time from birth to death.”

[...] The excerpts show not only something of Seth’s connections on the “other side” of Jane, but in one case her violent reactions of surprise and panic when she attempted to translate something of Seth Two’s reality in terms of our own camouflage world: She found herself deeply involved in an unexpected experience with “massiveness” — one of the subjects I want to refer to in these preliminary notes. And Seth Two — or our imperfect grasp of what such an energy gestalt can mean or represent — comprises at least one of the sources of the Seth material itself.

(Unlike Seth, Seth Two has never been physical in our terms, and only partially comprehends our reality even while helping to form it. [...]

“Speaking of the dead hole in a galaxy, say ours, it emerges in what would be to us an atom of fantastic size, but the same thing happens on a different scale as far as the creation of matter is concerned within our own system.”¹²

[...] He was afraid that his spontaneous self had been swallowed in our sessions. The emotional reaction was rather natural, since our last session touched on some deep points.

[...] (Pause.) I will now then close our session, and leave you, I hope, in anticipation for our next.

[...] In our sessions I usually bring additional energy with me, and Ruburt knows how to handle it. [...]

[...] Regularity of sessions, our sessions, will help now also. [...]

(In our defenses here, I’ll digress a bit to note that although we may do that on occasion, Jane and I certainly do not blame others anything like we used to, or the way we still see others do. Our incidence is cut way down, in other words. Even when we do catch ourselves indulging, one might say, always in the backs of our minds lies the knowledge that, really, each of us creates our own reality, and are therefore participators in whatever events we may find ourselves enmeshed in—even those we dislike. [...]

[...] Jane had been tempted to pass up the session and continue work on God of Jane, but I reminded her that I could use Seth’s information on the disclaimer in our reply to the legal department at Prentice-Hall. We knew by now that we were resigned to having the disclaimer inserted into Mass Events, but we wanted to have our say—partially out of anger and partially out of self-protection, since we didn’t believe all the legal department had told us; we wanted them to know we understood the subterfuges involved.

[...] Our work has achieved enough notice so that it is indeed considered to have some effects upon your society. [...] That means that we have made inroads, that we are reaching people, and that even the Prentice legal department is aware of our readership. [...]

[...] To that extent, then, of course our attitudes would be different. [...]

I know that our notetakers are by now weary, and I am indeed most appreciative of their efforts in my behalf. I will ask you to bear with me, dear Doctor Instream, and we will shortly return to our small chat.

I now suggest a break, out of due respect for our notetakers. And for our Jesuit here, who so studiously examines my every move and gesture, I am indeed quite flattered in my own way. [...]

[...] I thoroughly enjoyed our brief meeting. Our conversation indeed was most beneficial. [...]

[...] I just wanted to add that Peggy and Bill, in some way we don’t understand, seem to be of a great help in our sessions. And whenever they come to our sessions I seem to feel some kind of reinforcement that I don’t quite understand either, that appears to be most helpful.”

Early in September Tam mailed back to us, for our approval, the copy-edited 484-page manuscript for Mass Events. An independent reader had gone over our labors line by line, checking for everything from grammar and contradictions to philosophy, “flagging” questions for us by noting them on slips of pink paper taped to the appropriate manuscript pages. Along with our other projects—including answering a steady flow of letters—Jane and I spent the month going over Mass Events, accepting some suggestions but rejecting many others. On the 13th we received from Sue Watkins our first copy of Volume 1 of Conversations With Seth, Sue’s excellent account of the ESP classes Jane used to hold in one of the two apartments we rented in downtown Elmira, before we moved to the hill house outside of town in 1975. [...] Early in October I returned Mass Events to our publisher once more; it was ready to be set in type. [...]

[...] We instinctively know that disasters mimic the birth and death of cells within our bodies—we instinctively know that all life survives death, that death is the bursting of life into new forms, hence our fascination with accidents and fires. The psyche itself leapfrogs our beliefs at usual conscious levels, and sees us as a part of all life, excitedly forming all kinds of complexes which then fill themselves to the brim, exploding, escaping the framework only to form another. The emotions themselves can sense this when we let them, and grasping that sense of excitement can show us a glimpse of the even greater freedom of our own psychic existence, which flows into us as individuals and then bursts apart that short-lived form into another, as the excitement of individuation leaps from life to life.”

[...] We seem to come from darkness, taking our parents’ memories on faith for proof that there was time before our birth. As we grow toward old age, we have past time to play with—we know where we came from in usual terms—and the darkness that once seemed to stretch behind our source or origin seems to be our destination. [...]

I plan to mention certain secular affairs that I’ve kept track of while Jane has been producing Dreams, but mainly these notes will deal with personal and professional events in our own lives. [...] And we put some of it together simply through our conversations.¹ I also remind the reader that everything described took place within the overall context of an extended presidential campaign in this country.

I’m proud to have helped Jane and Seth make their contributions in our complex and very creative system of things in this reality. [...] Each one of us is part of the great mystery of All That Is, then, which we explore together, yet each in our own way.

[...] I tried, but could not cry as he spoke: “Loving and merciful God, we entrust our sister to you. [...]

[...] Our gravesite is not in Elmira. [...]

Over the years Jane’s and my work led to our receiving many thousands of letters, not only from this country but from abroad, too. [...]

[...] The sheriff told us the bureau was flooded by mail requests for plates and was very much behind; indeed they had just begun filling mail orders a day or so before our visit. The sheriff advised us to return a few days later if we did not receive our plates. [...]

[...] It will be noted that his data moved between the fact of our being strongly concerned about the license plates, and the experimental object itself, which was picked up as the focal point of our concern.

[...] Jane and I picked it up at our local Bureau of Motor Vehicles the second week in January, when we went there to inquire about the delay in receiving my new license plates. [...]

(The session was held in our front room and was not interrupted. [...]

We certainly would not want all of our sessions to be witnessed by any means, so you have no fear in that direction. On the other hand again, such experience is necessary and quite valid, and should be accepted certainly as a part of our work.

[...] She remembered the material concerning Helen Dyer, and now told me she had felt an immediate rapport with Helen when she entered our apartment this evening, and a desire to help her in some way. Helen has been in our place once before, perhaps a couple of years ago.

(At 8:30 PM this evening our landlady, Marian Spaziani, and a friend of hers visited us briefly. [...]

(The session was held in our back room. [...]

(As Seth states in closing, the impressions tonight are legitimate, but too far removed for our purposes. [...] The envelope object was made in our presence; because we were present we feel an emotional rapport with the data which would be lacking for an outsider. [...]

[...] The object was a sheet of yellow paper upon which our young friend Don Wilbur doodled various numbers and words on the evening of Friday, April 15. [...]

We will now take our break.

Now for our object. [...]

(Our area is still recovering. Jane and I, of course, are very conscious of how our involvement in the flood interrupted the production of this book in the middle of Chapter One. [...] [In them, incidentally, I mentioned the destruction of Elmira’s Walnut Street Bridge; the old steel span had crossed the Chemung River half a block from our apartment house. Work — very noisy work, which is to continue for a year — is now underway to replace it.] In Chapter Eighteen, Seth explains the emotional origins of Agnes as a whole, and our personal behavior within it.

(A note: Those who are interested in material on the fluctuations of consciousness can refer to the following sessions in Seth Speaks: the 567th session in Chapter Sixteen, on the phasing of atoms in and out of our system; the 576th session in Chapter Nineteen, on alternate presents; and the ESP class session for June 23, 1970, in the Appendix, on organization in our present reality. [...]

[...] That session, as well as the 581st, also contains some applicable data on Seth’s electromagnetic energy (EE) units, their various speeds, and our interpretations of them as events, dream events, movement-through-time, and so forth.

[...] By then I had the idea that psychological attitudes could affect the car, and had recalled that once before Seth had dealt with the car and our attitudes while on our way to a Maine vacation in August 1964. [...]

[...] I did find it interesting, especially when I contemplated trying to explain it to our service manager at the garage, who is a personal friend of ours, but does not know about these sessions.)

Something in the nature of a fabric with a wooden framework I believe, for our object. [...] This is our object. (Pause.)

[...] (Pause at 10:20.) I will ask you, Joseph, for our test, and I will then have a few general remarks to make concerning our tests at this point.

[...] Our interpretation here, without in any way being positive, was that this concerned the square cardboard cake box described earlier—which was square as we recall it—and the smaller birthday card. [...] Taking literally Seth’s blanket notice after break that our interpretations were correct, this would include the above. We wouldn’t claim it on our own however.

(Another staircase interpretation here may concern our own steep flight of back stairs here at the apartment. [...] Since it was a pleasant summer evening on July 1, we held the party out on the back lawn, leaving the cake upstairs in our apartment as a surprise for Bill. [...]

(Seth desired to come through Friday evening, since we had obviously set the stage through our conversation. [...]

At our… Are you ready?

2. The “officially accepted life” mentioned here reminded me that in the last (694th) session Seth used the phrase “your officially recognized idea of physical reality” in discussing the role probable events played in our world history. [...] In the 684th session he discussed our “official activity” when he compared our reaction to hunches and premonitions with our acceptance of normal psychological reality.

[...] Imagine, however, that there is a homeland from which our groups originally came. [...]

[...] Mama and Papa, in our analogy, represent the infinite potential within one basic unit (CU) of consciousness.

All of our possessions were in Elmira. [...] And how could we go to Florida and leave all of our friends, and how inconvenient would it be to deal with a publisher (Prentice-Hall) headquartered way up north in New Jersey? Jane was much more willing to attempt the move than I was, but I think we knew all along that beneath our questions and feelings the idea of moving was more like a shared dream, or a probable reality we chose not to explore during our current physical lives. Jane’s mother was to die within three months of our return home, mine over a year later (in November 1973).

The session had been an impromptu one, and developed on our last night in Marathon because we’d been worrying about our goals in life, and how significant a part the Seth material might play in our affairs. [...]

[...] The second is that Jane and I are perfectly aware of all the good things that medical science has contributed to our worldwide civilization; given our species’ present collective beliefs about the vulnerability of the individual to outside forces, medicine as it’s now practiced is a vital component of that civilization. The third point is that with his views, Seth is simply trying to open our eyes to a much wider understanding of human capacities.

[...] I knew that a few years later the sign had accompanied us on our move to the hill house just outside the city, where we live now. [...] From our records I learned that I’d taken Seth’s quotation from a personal session Jane held while we were on vacation in Marathon, a resort community in the Florida Keys.

[...] A few general remarks following our last discussion, concerning our sessions.

[...] Jane said this use of the word beats reminded her of the hum of the motor on our recorder. We didn’t get enough information here, but she believes it a reference to the recorder motor rather than a reference, say, to our car.

(In the 210th session for November 22,1965, Seth stated that he had picked up an “incipient malignancy” in Helen Dyer, who is a friend of our landlady, Marian Spaziani. [...]

(In the 229th session Seth went into some detail concerning the tax problems of our landlord, Jimmy Spaziani. [...]

[...] Our Associate Editor, Mr. Charles Chintala, will be in touch with you soon regarding this material.

[...] She of course knows that our mail usually arrives around 3 PM. [...]

(I was painting in my studio, took a break, and went down to our front mailbox and picked up the mail. [...]

[...] Jane walked into our living room and picked up the card from Parker, after I asked her if she had seen the mail yet. [...]

[...] We’ll also want written into our contracts our right to be notified when any deals are made, the payments made, and our right to refuse the deal if we decide we don’t like it. [...]

[...] I bitterly resent the cutting in the first place, and the time that will be spent away from Mass Events, now, as I do all the work necessary to make our points. Jane finally agrees that we must take certain actions now in our professional lives, and we don’t know what will happen. [...]

(The upshot of all of this at the moment is that Jane will not be signing any contracts at this time, and that we’ll be informing Prentice-Hall that we won’t be contracting for any work for them until our questions and assurances are amply demonstrated. [...] Our meek acceptance of the deal, I’m afraid, would only lead to more of the same. [...]

(Our first reactions were ones of such stunned surprise that we didn’t even get mad. [...]

But why, I asked Jane, haven’t our best minds—at least those who have operated throughout the centuries of our recorded history—been able to arrive at some sort of reasonable consensus about the “origin” of our universe (if it had one), its processes, and our human place in it? [...] Why have so many human beings (an estimated 50 billion of them) had to exist along the way before we arrived at our present point—from which point we in our collective wisdom think we might begin to provide meaningful answers to such questions? [...]

However, aside from being in outright conflict with the theory of evolution [and the idea of an ancient universe], the beliefs of the creationists do pose a number of questions that are quite intriguing from our joint viewpoint. [...]

[...] Our rule is that otherwise we do not change or delete any of his material without noting it.

[...] At best our established concepts seem grossly insufficient. [...]

[...] The fate of each of us is in our own hands. [...] We cannot blame God, society, or our parents for misfortunes, since before this physical life we chose the circumstances into which we would be born and the challenges that could best bring about our development. [...] Telepathically, we are all aware of the mass ideas from which we form our overall conception of physical reality.

I don’t mean to imply that I feel myself entirely released from every worry and fear, only that I now know we do have the freedom to change ourselves and our environment, and that in a very basic manner, we ourselves form the environment to which we then react. I believe that we form our own reality—now, and after death.

The first chapters of this book will deal with the emergence of Seth’s personality and the impact he had on our lives as we tried to understand what was happening. [...] Never in our lives had we found ourselves so caught between curiosity and caution, so fascinated and baffled.

[...] Through sessions he has helped friends, strangers, and students, and by following his instructions my husband and I are learning to develop our own psychic potentials.