“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You cannot say that your ancestors, like some strange plants, were growing toward what you are, or that you are the sum of their experiences. They were, they are, themselves. You cannot say that you are the sum of your past reincarnational lives either, and for the same reasons. You cut off the knowledge of yourself, and so divisions seem to occur. You are somewhat like a plant that recognizes only one of its leaves at a time. A leaf feels its deeper reality as a part of the plant, and adds to its own sense of continuity, and even to its own sense of individuality. But you often pretend that you are some odd dangling leaf, with no roots, growing without a plant to support you.

Each leaf seeks to express its leafhood as fully as possible. Leaves take in sun, which helps the plant itself grow (through photosynthesis). The development of the leaves, then, is very important to the plant’s own existence. The cells of the plant are kept in contact with the environment through the leaves’ experiences, and future probabilities are always taken into consideration. The smallest calculations involving light and dark are known. The life of the plant and its leaves cannot be separated.

Selves (spelled) have far greater freedom than leaves, but they can also root themselves if they choose — and they do. Reincarnational selves are like leaves that have left the plant, choosing a new medium of existence. In this analogy, the dropped leaves of the physical plant have fulfilled their own purposes to themselves as leaves, and to the plant. These selves, however, dropping from one branch of time, root themselves in another time and become new plants from which others will sprout.

(Long pause.) The plant has its own “idea” of itself, in which each of its leaves has its part. Yet each leaf has the latent capacities of the whole plant. Root one, for instance, and a new plant will grow.

[...] In 1961, shortly after we had moved to Elmira, a friend with whom Jane worked at an art gallery gave her two poinsettia plants that we had for several years. This is easily remembered because the two 1961 plants are the only other poinsettias we have ever owned. We have for instance never bought a poinsettia plant for ourselves, or as a gift, etc.; the two 1961 plants and the plant which furnished the objects for tonight constitute the only three poinsettias we have been involved with. The 1961 plants were outright gifts. The third plant I found on the back porch of the apartment house last winter, where it had been discarded by Miss Callahan. [...]

[...] The plant I acquired secondhand via Miss Callahan is the only poinsettia we have. The two 1961 plants died a couple of years ago. Oddly enough, none of our three plants have ever bloomed for us. [...] Interestingly enough, Jane used to see our present plant in bloom in Miss Callahan’s apartment, before Miss Callahan disposed of it.

[...] The plant we now have, which furnished the leaves used as objects, is, we have been told, quite old and tall for a poinsettia. [...] The plant stands perhaps three feet tall; this may have given rise to Seth’s tall data here. [...] In addition, the day I removed the leaves used as objects from the plant, it stood on our bathroom windowsill. This is quite high; the plant on the sill gave the illusion of reaching almost to the ceiling.

(The objects for the 57th envelope experiment were two leaves taken from our poinsettia plant. The plant is an old one, and one of our favorites. [...] The plant also has an interesting history, which will be brought out later. [...]

[...] The interesting thing here is that the larger leaves of the plant at the office are now beginning to show definite brownish tones. As stated Jane has never seen the plant at the office in its fine growth—merely a slip from a parent plant here in the apartment. Since this house plant also is developing a brown cast, Jane could know this easily enough once she, or Seth, picked up the idea that the envelope object represented a begonia.

(The 60th envelope experiment used as object a quick black line drawing, on porous white paper, that I made of a giant begonia plant at the office. The plant sits on a taboret beside my drawing table. [...] Jane has not seen the plant, hardly ever visiting the office.

[...] As stated, the office begonia plant grew from a slip taken from a plant here in the apartment. This parent plant was given to Jane by our neighbor on the same floor, Miss Callahan, a retired school teacher in her late 70’s.

[...] We think this a good reference to the fact that my begonia at the office, which modeled for the object, is a descendant of the plant here at home. This parent plant, given to Jane by our neighbor on the same floor of our apartment house, Miss Callahan, also has other descendants growing very well.

[...] The plant is not dependent upon you. [...] It is you who have placed the plant in the particular circumstances in which it is now. Basically, the plant is not dependent upon you. And if the life force did not fill the plant, no amount of watering would make it grow. [...]

You see yourselves in physical form—the analogy of plants upsets you because you move about and plants are stationary. And because you consider yourselves above a plant, and do not realize what a fine consciousness they possess. [...]

[...] and there are ugly plants there that you have created. And there are poisonous plants there that you have created. [...]

[...] We tend you carefully as a gardener tends his beloved plants. [...]

We will be treating this same topic in our own sessions...imagine the ill plant as being able to use sunlight more effectively during the day and continuing to make use at night of that energy which has been absorbed. (Picturing the image of a healthy plant is) something that the plant will be able to use in its own fashion ... The plant will give you a kind of “thank you” in the form of energy... You ought to try to work with plants also in the early hours of the evening. [...]

[...] (He went on to say that the same power could be applied to plants as well, and that I had apparently used same in my previous existence as a gardening monk.) A plant cannot fight back, (and it would be good to practice on something whose subconscious could not give me trouble. [...]

The plants in a house are also quite aware of the growing fetus; the plants will also pick up the fact that a member of the family is ill, often in advance of physical symptoms. [...] Plants will also know whether a fetus is male or female.

[...] He is in telepathic communication with animals and other people, and on a different level he is in a kind of communication with plants and other such consciousnesses. Plants will react quite sharply to an abortion. [...]

[...] So does any consciousness, including that of a plant. [...]

Following the accident at TMI, and aside from the great fears “generated” by it, a host of problems began accumulating for the nuclear power industry—involving everything from poor plant design (as Seth commented in the 914th session for Chapter 7 of Dreams), to enormous cost overruns and the fear of default on bond issues, shoddy construction and quality control, human and mechanical error, the disposal of radioactive waste, conflicts with antinuclear and environmental groups, arguments over evacuation plans at various nuclear-plant sites, a greatly expanded list of steps (numbering in the thousands) that the NRC is compiling for utilities to take in order to increase the safety of their plants, and even governmental concern over the possible manipulation and falsification of plant safety records. The last nuclear plant was ordered in 1978. [...] Unheard of, in view of all of those predictions that we must continue to build nuclear power generating plants to meet projected demands!

[...] While some utility companies in the United States are in trouble with their nuclear plants, then, other companies do own plants that perform very well and very economically. [...]

[...] 2] at the Three Mile Island nuclear power generating plant in southeastern Pennsylvania. [...]

(Early last Wednesday an ominous development began unfolding at Three Mile Island, the nuclear-power-plant located on an island in the Susquehanna River below Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It seems that through a combination of mechanical failures and human error, unit 2, one of the plant’s two nuclear reactors, overheated and discharged radioactive water into the river, and began releasing small amounts of radioactive gasses into the atmosphere. [The entire plant is idle, since unit 1 had already been shut down for refueling.] By now the situation is much more serious, however: There’s a chance of a catastrophic “meltdown” of the uranium fuel rods in the damaged reactor’s core—the worst possible accident that can occur in such circumstances, short of an explosion, and a kind that proponents of nuclear power have long maintained “almost certainly cannot happen.” [...]

[...] “Strange,” I mused to Jane, “that of all the nuclear power plants in the world, we end up living that close to the one that goes wrong….”

What does the plant say? Forget that the plant speaks to you, but what does the plant on its own say? [...]

All plants have minds. [...] There are many more experiments that you can do, and I hope that you will, with the nature of plant activity and consciousness. [...]

[...] Scary stories abound about our nuclear dilemmas, ranging from tales of poorly designed plants, control rooms, and instruments, to the failure to promptly report potentially serious accidents, to the fact that in 1978 every one of the country’s more than 70 nuclear power plants had at least one unexpected shutdown because of procedural errors, mechanical failures, or both. [...] There’s worry about the plants emitting constant radiation, and about their vulnerability to damage by sabotage, earthquakes, and — more likely — fires. [...] And in all of this concern for safety there’s much irony: for Three Mile Island, and the people of eastern Pennsylvania, were saved not by the plant’s emergency cooling systems, but by nonsafety-related equipment that plant operators finally used to improvise cooling of the reactor’s overheated core.

[...] 2, one the two reactors at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear power generating plant, overheated and came close to a catastrophic meltdown of its uranium fuel. [...]

[...] The men were employed by the “plumbers,” a secret group working for the Republican President Richard Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President, and their tasks were to photograph records and to check upon listening devices — “bugs” — that had been planted in the offices during a first illegal entry in May. [...]

(Early last Wednesday an ominous development began unfolding at Three Mile Island, the nuclear power generating plant located on an island in the Susquehanna River below Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. [...] 2, one of the plant’s two nuclear reactors, overheated, discharging radioactive water into the river, and began releasing small amounts of radioactive gases into the atmosphere. [The entire plant is idle now, since Unit No. [...]

[...] “Strange,” I mused to Jane, “that of all the nuclear power plants in the world, we end up living that close to the one that goes wrong….”

Look at your nuclear-reactor troubles at the plant by Harrisburg (Three Mile Island). [...]

[...] And indeed, the present physical event as it exists now at the energy plant near Harrisburg can easily be likened to — and is — a warning dream to change man’s actions.

The plants in a room, or in a house, are quite aware of the growing fetus; the plants will also pick up the fact that a member of a family is ill, often in advance of physical symptoms. [...] Plants will know whether a fetus is male or female, even if the mother does not.

[...] He is telepathically in communication with animals and other people, and on a different level he is in a kind of communication with plants and other such consciousnesses.

Plants will react quite sharply to an abortion. [...]

[...] So does any consciousness, including that of a plant. [...]

(Seth’s reference to her material on plants concerned some short humorous essays she’d started writing for her own amusement a couple of days ago, in response to some new ideas. Her heading for them is tentative: The Plants’ Book of People. The Plants’ Symposium: People. [...]

[...] Yet in Monday night’s deleted 847th session that “energy personality essence,” as he calls himself, digressed once again from work on Mass Events to give us more excellent material on plant and animal consciousness. [...]

[...] And Ruburt’s (Jane’s) material on plants may lead him to some most creative extensions of his own consciousness, and new insights.

The severity of the “event” at Three Mile Island has spurred antinuclear protesters into action in many areas of the country; and the proliferating state, federal, and industry investigations into the accident promise to generate a collective fallout of a kind that’s bound to have far more impact on the nuclear power industry, and society, than anything that’s come from the crippled plant itself so far. [...]

(Right now, a week after it began to manifest itself, the situation at the crippled nuclear power plant near Harrisburg is still very tense. [...] On March 31, children and pregnant women were advised to evacuate an area within five miles of the plant, and today city and county civil defense directors in eastern Pennsylvania were given plans for a precautionary evacuation of everyone within a 25-mile radius of Three Mile Island. [...] Local milk supplies are safe to drink, since dairy cattle are eating corn and hay that’s been stored for months, but no one really knows the effects of radiation on the unborn calves being carried by many cows in the plant area. [...]

[...] Among them are: cogeneration, the use of waste heat from manufacturing processes to generate electricity; solar radiation; ocean waves; new, more sophisticated methods of burning coal so that it’s much less polluting; subterranean heat; the production, from municipal solid wastes, of ethanol (alcohol) as an excellent substitute for gasoline; the burning of biomass — waste materials from the home and farm; various methods of deriving energy from the vast oil shale deposits in our western states; the establishment of “energy farms” of trees and hydrocarbon-generating plants; energy reservoirs of pumped water. We think such alternate sources should be pursued even if they cost more in economic terms than nuclear power, either initially or continually, for surely none of them could produce the horrendous results — and enormous costs — that would follow even one massive failure at a nuclear power plant.

[...] That is, the threat of an “immediate catastrophe” from a meltdown in the plant’s Unit No. [...]

[...] [Nor do we know what fate awaits the plant’s undamaged Unit No. [...]

[...] This year alone, for instance, he’s already given a good amount of excellent information upon a number of nonbook topics — among them the interpretation of dreams; human, animal, and plant consciousness, and the interactions among them; human sexuality; viruses and inoculation; other realities he himself inhabits, and so forth. [...]

[...] Just lately another event occurred — a breakdown and near disaster at a nuclear plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. [...]

The awareness of plant life lies along these lines. [...] The awareness of plant life is also like the awareness of a subject in deep trance. Except for the suggestion and stimulus received by regular natural forces on your plane, the plant life does not bestir itself in other directions. But like the subject in trance, our plant is aware. [...]

[...] Your hybrid plants merely demonstrate this susceptibility to new suggestion which your plant, like your susceptible trance subject, will gladly follow. [...]

[...] The inner senses of all plant life are well attuned, alert and very important. [...]

In some fragments such as much plant life and vegetative life there is strong use of certain inner senses. [...]

[...] There are better places than others to build houses or structures — points where health and vitality are strengthened, where, other things being equal, plants will grow and flourish and where all beneficial conditions seem to meet.

(10:23.) In a given room, plants will grow more effectively in a particular area than in other areas, providing that both areas contain such necessary requirements as light. [...]

These points are like invisible power plants, in other words, activated when any emotional feeling or thought of sufficient intensity comes into contact. [...]

[...] Ruburt thought the plant next door was dead. [...] He is as resilient as any plant.

(I see plants I have planted long ago; flourishing and beautiful, and can be used for decorating or repotted. I think that here I had a false awakening and told Rob about the beautiful plants. [...]

(The false awakening: I tell Rob about the plants, and perhaps make a note to record the dream. [...]

[...] The plants in Ruburt’s dream did represent the books upon which he has worked and is working. [...]

[...] Recently, talking it over with Jane, I decided against expanding my working hours at the plant. I also decided it to the extent that if management insisted I increase my hours, I would leave the plant and try developing some other recent ideas I have acquired on making a living, one of them being teaching art by, perhaps, starting my own school on a small scale at first.

(What did develop was that my boss at work, at 11:50 AM, called me on the phone–he happened to be at the company’s other plant on Elmira’s southside at the time–and asked me to put in more time on the job as a regular routine. [...]