“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

This time, though, I have the translation of a whole composition to present. Jane spontaneously gave voice to her song yesterday afternoon while sitting in the glass-enclosed front porch of our hill house. The day was mild and sunny and breezy, and I’d opened all of the windows for her. The rich green lawn sloped down to the great maple and the sumac trees lining the road. I hadn’t asked her to do a song for this last essay; she told me afterward that she hadn’t realized I was that close to finishing it. (The whole series has taken much longer than I expected it to, though.) I only know that Jane began to sing in very melodious tones that flowed through the house. I easily heard her from my writing room. “Oh, your singing is so clear and sweet!” her visiting nurse had exclaimed the other day, when my wife had begun to sing while the nurse was changing the dressings on her decubiti. And that present clarity of voice, almost free of tremor, showed how much Jane has improved since returning home. How different her singing is now from that very mournful Sumari song she’d recorded last February, a few days before going into the hospital. “Let my soul find shelter elsewhere,” she’d lamented then.

Finally, since I opened the first essay with a line from one of Jane’s songs in Sumari, I think it appropriate to close the last essay with Sumari, too.

Jane didn’t tape this new Sumari, though—which we regretted—for she wasn’t able to get out of her chair to hunt for her recorder; I was too charmed just listening to her sing to think of a tape. She wrote down the translation as soon as she finished the song. When she read it to me I knew at once that it would go here, for a few words she certainly sang of the basic theme of these essays—of the sublime, immortal consciounesses of the earth and All That Is, of that loving redemption that consciousness always makes possible somehow, somewhere, in the eternal private world of each of us, and that each of us always seeks:

their winter song

and listen to their winter song

[...] Said she’d originally thought of it as a song, but hadn’t mentioned that to me before.)

[...] The new songs are the first step in this procedure. The ancient songs will follow when the practice of the new ones is complete.

The Sumari songs are many things. [...]

(Here Seth means books on the ancient Sumari songs and on the new.)

[...] Each song is unique and thrilling, whether it’s muted or powerful, melodic or animated; often the particular delivery is made up of a combination of such attributes, as it was this evening. Class members discussed the song briefly. [...]

[...] When they’ve been recorded she can do the same with her Sumari songs and her verbal prose, as I call it. [...]

[...] I think that Seth’s energy propels me into Sumari when he initiates a song, as he did here. [...]

Now over a period of time you will all be given a series of sounds or a particular song or chant that will be yours alone and meant to apply to you alone. [...] And if you give me a moment we will begin with one and you will always be told ahead of time if the song applies to you. [...]

[...] There are physical repercussions in your own bodies that occur if you would but listen to your bodies and feel them when the songs go on, for there is language beneath words. [...]

and maybe sing a little song.”

That evocative, prophetic line is from a Sumari song that Jane sang to herself a few days before she went into an Elmira, New York, hospital on February 26, 1982. [...] She recorded her brief song in a sad, low-pitched, quavering voice that was like none I’d heard her use before. [...]

[...] The song’s mournful tones swam heavily in the room. [...]

[...] I asked her for more on the song’s interpretation, but she just repeated that line. [...]

[...] In here she sang some Sumari songs. [...] In between the songs she spoke to me in Sumari. [...]

[...] The other probabilities that you have brought into existence and creation and song automatically, joyfully and creatively. [...]

[...] You have chosen for the unoperable intimacy of tragedy and flesh and pain in order to teach yourselves the unoperable exultant nature of your own vitality and energy and song. [...]

[...] Consciousness did not arrive because inert matter suddenly sparked into activity and song. [...]

[...] No—no form of matter, however potent, will be self-evolved into consciousness no matter what other bits of matter are added to it, but without the consciousness, the matter would not be there in the universe floating around waiting for another component to give it reality, consciousness, existence or song. [...]

Now the atoms and molecules that compose you are glorious impermanent things, and through the leadership of your consciousness have you led them to consciousness and song and through you do they experience what you experience. [...]

[...] They had songs of great beauty, and a most extensive vocabulary. [...] Man identified with their easy flight up the cliffsides, and followed the sounds of their songs to safe clearings. [...]

[...] At a different level I sing Sumari songs, showing musical knowledge and accomplishment far beyond my normal talents or background. The songs can also be translated, but they communicate emotionally whether or not the words are understood. [...]

[...] Consciousness did not arrive because inert matter suddenly soared into activity and song. [...]

[...] Without the consciousness, the matter would not be there in the universe, floating around, waiting for another component to give it reality, consciousness, existence, or song.”

[...] Once again, however, she shied away from translating any more of that dirgelike Sumari song she’d sung to herself, and recorded, shortly before going into the hospital. [...]

[...] People who are not writers or artists, or poets or musicians, often suddenly find themselves almost transformed for a brief period of time — suddenly struck by a poem or a song or a snatch of music, or by a sketch — that seems to come from nowhere, that seems to emerge outside of the context of usual thought patterns, and that brings with it an understanding, a joy, a compassion, or an artistic bent that seemingly did not exist a moment earlier. Where did the song or poem or music come from? [...]

[...] Ruburt’s chain of association gave the name Patterson because of an old song. [...]

[...] She said the Patterson connection was from an old song—perhaps a Beatle title—having to do with “Oh, Mrs. Patterson,” or something like that.

Sumari came through with a song then Seth spoke. [...]

[...] At midnight she sang a short song to me in Sumari. The song was very clear, lyrical and restful; I had been in a low mood today and now she tried to cheer me up. [...]

[...] The verbal facility came easily in song, and so you wandered, singing, from town to town, using for your songs the news that was happening . [...]

[...] The crickets and wood bugs rose up in song from the summer-thick woods out back. [...]