(This session was held for John Pitre and his wife Peg of Franklin, LA, following John’s telephone call to Jane earlier this evening. [...] See also the 364th, 366th sessions, etc.

(John reported that his wife was very ill, had been in the hospital recently for several weeks, etc., and had not entered into a very deep trance state during sessions with a hypnotherapist; Seth had recommended Peg see such a professional. [...]

[...] Jane said she felt Seth getting her ready for the session early. [...]

The woman has strongly resisted the hypnosis sessions, and has suffered relapses rather than suffer the intense psychic and psychological reorganization that would be necessary for any meaningful recovery.

In the next session the following night, Seth launched into the nature of my last trance experience and used it as a stepping stone for his first real discussion of the nature of human personality. As the session shows, Seth apparently decided that it was time to take me in hand. [...]

[...] I would much prefer more broken-up sessions if they are necessary, than sessions in which I see myself as a torture master.

As a result of the following sessions, for instance, we began “testing” physical reality for its subjective yields. [...] We tried to experience it differently, particularly after the nineteenth session and an experiment in self-hypnosis that Rob tried on his own.

5
Excerpts from Sessions 15 and 16

(Tonight she was so far out of it after supper that I thought there was no chance at all for a session. [...] “It bothers me that here we’ve gone back to the sessions,” I said, “but we can’t get at all that great material I know is there....” She assured me that she would make an effort to have the session tonight—at least something. [...]

[...] I typed the brief session for last Friday night. [...]

[...] Jane sat dozing so long I didn’t know whether it was a pause or the end of the session. [...]

[...] I’d even caught myself lapsing; I was weary,” Jane said, laughing, that she’d be willing to sit there until 3 o’clock in the morning to get what she wanted in a session, but: “You’re not sitting on your ass until three o’clock in the morning,” I said. [...]

For material on mental and psychic expansions in old age, and the hemispheres of the brain, see the 650th session in Chapter 13 of Personal Reality. [...] See the 586th session at 11:02.

7. In Personal Reality, see Session 638, bridging chapters 9 and 10, then Session 639. [...]

(Louder:) End of session —

NOTES: SESSION 687

(At lunch time I told her I wanted her to have a session today if at all possible, by way of encouraging her new course. After a very light lunch, Darvoset, and so forth, I read her yesterday’s session and poetry. She was all ready to try for a session, but I didn’t push for it yet. I read her the short session for August 7, in which Seth had said that her physical improvements have already begun.

(Jane said she wanted to try for the session. [...]

[...] Again, the session itself does indeed physically rearrange, reorganize, so that the bodily and mental contents are filled with soothing healing messages and potions.

(I read the session to Jane. [...]

[...] It is as you suggested (in my notes for yesterday’s session) also advantageous that we discuss other matters beside Ruburt’s symptoms in our sessions. [...]

[...] Jane tried reading yesterday’s session. [...]

(Then Jane told me she wanted to have a little session.)

He had another brief-enough surge of blueness this morning (which Jane didn’t tell me about), and the sessions enabled him to cut such experiences short, or to nip them in the bud, so to speak. [...]

[...] “I need to read some of the earlier sessions,” Jane had said when I arrived, so at 3:50 she began reading the session for January 13, a good one, while I did mail. At 4:20 she gave up reading for a cigarette and a possible session, regardless of the late hour.)

[...] At 3:15 Jane started reading yesterday’s session. [...] She was interrupted by Carla and Shawn to check her vitals — temperature 99 — and finished the session ten minutes later.

[...] I read the session to her before leaving at about 7:05. [...]

(The session was held in our front room. Once again Jane smoked very little during the session. [...]

(Seth began talking about moment points in the 149th-152nd sessions. He began on the spacious present in session 44 in Volume 2.

(In Volume 5, see the 232nd session for Feb. [...] In that session Ezra is dealt with in the envelope data with the same type of data; Seth gave Jane the grave data, signifying Ezra’s death, but at that time Jane, who did not like the idea of graves, did not use the word. [...]

We will then end this evening’s session. [...] If you wish we can continue, or end the session as you prefer.

(I would now like to describe two effects, one of Jane’s and one of mine, that took place almost simultaneously some few minutes before the session began. In addition, my experience blended into another one after the session started — but more about that later.

(1. As we sat waiting for the session to begin, Jane told me that the face of Joseph, in my oil painting of Ruburt and Joseph,^* smiled down at her from its spot on the living room wall. [...] The effect was still there, she said; it lasted for perhaps two minutes, until just before session time at 9.

[...] I first realized its onset at about 8:50, and at once began to give myself suggestions to minimize it because I didn’t want to alarm Jane by delaying the session. [...] My suggestions were very beneficial, though, and by session time at 9:05 I realized that not only had my experience gone as “far” as it was going to go, but also that it was on the retreat. [...]

(Jane began to speak for Seth at quite a slow pace, in contrast to her faster rate of recent sessions. As the session began I had to make a little bit of an effort to see the page clearly in order to write.)

[...] In Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality, see Note 2 for Session 680, and the notes at the beginning of the 696th session.

8. Related material about my parents that has been published can be found in Volume 1. See Note 9 for the 679th session, and notes 2 and 3 for the 680th session.

[...] This was the second time in three weeks that Jane had mentioned a two-volume work; see the opening notes for the 721st session. [...]

(1. It not only incorporates Seth’s “island” analogy, but Jane’s and his information in the last [725th] session on strands of consciousness.

(As session time approached Jane became increasingly nervous. She felt this way because of our rather long rest, and the recent developments in the presentation of the sessions themselves. She had no idea of the subject matter for the session, nor did she know whether she would sit with her eyes closed or pace about as usual.

This has been a fruitful session, and I am pleased to find us back on schedule. You will discover that this evening’s material on the physical organism in particular will be most helpful, particularly in future sessions. [...]

(Because of the holidays we did not hold sessions for Monday, December 28, and Wednesday, December 30.

[...] We will benefit greatly through various experiments within our sessions however, and some of these should be quite important to our overall progress.

The other still-lingering symptoms will quickly vanish also; the pendulum sessions, quite apart from our sessions, should be maintained as a kind of personal psychic hygiene until the habit of communication is thoroughly established. [...]

Ruburt did not trust the sessions for some time, since it was the abilities that made the sessions possible that so bothered him. [...]

[...] He will no longer block material now in the sessions, and therefore I will have a freer voice to counsel you when it may be needed.

[...] These sessions and material represent your closest and most dependable source of inner knowledge, outside of direct personal mystical experiences.

(John Bradley was a witness to tonight’s session. He has witnessed many sessions, usually stopping in on his trips into Elmira as a drug salesman. [...] Interestingly, John began to ask us questions about the Indian teacher, Baba, who was discussed by Seth and Gene Bernard in the 303rd session. John has never mentioned Baba before, nor had he read the 303rd session.

(The 303rd session was held on November 26, 1966 with Eugene and Sarah Bernard as witnesses. Recently Sarah telephoned Jane from Chapel Hill, NC, and asked for this session—the first held since August 16, 1967. Jane had needed a rest for some time, after the long grind of sessions from late 1963.

(On September 12, the day after this session was held, Jane bought the October issue of Fate Magazine. [...]

We will end the session, or take a break as you prefer.

It’s impossible, of course, for us not to have a sense of responsibility about the sessions. [...] We think about those subjects too, but in order to have the sessions on a week-to-week basis we concentrate upon the simple creative achievement embodied in each session itself, and let go of the larger implications. [...]

2. I’m presenting the private portion of tonight’s session for two reasons: Seth comments a bit upon the creative production of the sessions, and he shows how we can habitually impose upon our physical selves our conscious ideas of what we “should be doing”—not paying enough attention to our impulsive, natural, bodily messages.

[...] After supper I suggested that if she had a session tonight Seth could comment upon her current series of relaxations. [...]

(After giving a little information for Jane,² Seth wound up the session:)

3. See Seth’s material on his units of consciousness, or CU’s, in sessions 682–83 for Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality. In the 682nd session after 9:47, for example, he discussed relationships between CU’s and probable realities.

6. Much of Seth’s material in this session (and in this paragraph), along with his obviously intense feelings about what he was saying, reminded me of a group of sessions he gave well over a decade ago on the three creative dilemmas of All That Is. [...]

[...] In volume, her voice had ranged up and down the scale — a most unusual demonstration as far as these sessions for “Unknown” Reality are concerned; usually she has Seth come through in a rather businesslike, routine manner, with any milder voice or speed effects taking place within that framework.

[...] “Now I don’t know what to do — I could go to bed or continue the session for hours. …” She’d spent most of her day writing lyrics for rock music — for reasons not necessary to go into here — and now that activity reminded her of a poem she’d written in May 1963, well over six months before she began speaking for Seth. [...]

(Due to illness, the witnesses scheduled for this session did not appear.

[...] Jane also wanted to hold the session. [...]

[...] I am going to hold a fairly brief session, and then I will have some suggestions. [...]

What we are looking for here, and indeed one of the purposes of our sessions, is efficient use of various portions of the self in the perceptions of their own realities, and of an overall perception of each of the various portions of the self by the whole self, which transcends the others even while it is composed of them.

(Jane also felt that the sessions could be responsible for more deaths, or hurting people. She’d been terrified holding sessions, way back in the beginning, for the woman in Louisiana who had MS. [...] Jane basically didn’t want anything to do with sick people — was afraid she could hurt them in sessions.

[...] And the session had gone into the question I’d noted yesterday at the end of the session, about the roles of health and disease in our world. [...]

(Jane didn’t think the sessions could hurt her, though she often felt she didn’t get enough information through for herself. [...]

(Afterward, she said several times that she wanted to have a session. [...]

[...] Jane’s temperature was 98.9. I read her the sessions for February 1, 6, and 7. She said her eyes do bother her. [...] I suggested she have a session soon if she was going to, regardless of whether her blood pressure still had to be taken. [...]

(Before I turned her on her side, and then took a nap, I tried without success to locate my description of the dream with Jane and Joe in a previous recent session. [...] Nor had I written it up in my notes for the one day recently when Jane didn’t have a session — the 13th, I found out when I got home.

(I read this session to Jane after supper. [...] And she became even more frightened after the session. [...]

[...] I read yesterday’s session to Jane, after she couldn’t do it. [...]

[...] Jane now said that she hadn’t been sure we could have a session tonight, as a result of our discussion beforehand. Note that the session didn’t begin until 9:27. [...] She must be relaxed to begin a session. [...]

(Jane and I had a discussion concerning the questions I have compiled to ask Seth, via our new system, before sessions, hence our getting started late. [...]

[...] This session, for that matter, will have to develop into others, for I have concentrated some material about which you will have many questions when you read it.

(See page 5, the 422nd session of July 10, 1968. [...]

(Monday’s session, due 6/22, was not held because Jane’s father was visiting us from California. This is the first session we have deliberately missed since the sessions began last December. Jane’s father arrived last Saturday, and as early as Sunday morning Jane announced to me that there would be no session Monday night.

(At the exact time the session was due Monday, Jane, Del, Midge and I were visiting our landlord and his wife on their farm in Pine City. As 9 PM approached I watched Jane to see if she would give any sign that she was aware of Seth, or that he wanted a session. She gave none; later Jane said she hadn’t the slightest inkling of Seth’s presence as session time passed. Del and Midge have left, and we anticipate a normal session tonight.

(It will be remembered that in the last, 63rd, session, pages 158-159, Seth stated that a narcotics scandal was to break in Elmira within 3 months. [...]

[...] As session time arrived our cat Willy also became quite active. [...]