“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Tonight, during a pleasant supper time, our friends Ruburt and Joseph watched a television production based upon the Cinderella fairy tale. According to the definition I gave earlier, this fairy tale is a myth. Surely it may seem that such a children’s tale has little to do with any serious adult discussion concerning anything so profound as the creation of the known world. And most certainly, it may appear, no scientifically pertinent data about the nature of events can possibly be uncovered from such a source.

(10:02.) The tale of Cinderella becomes a fantasy, a delusion, or even a story about sexual awakening, in Freudian terms. The disappointments you have faced indeed make such a tale seem to be a direct contradiction to life’s realities. To some extent or another, however, the child in you remembers a certain sense of mastery only half realized, of power nearly grasped, then seemingly lost forever — and a dimension of existence in which dreams quite literally came true. The child in you sensed more, of course: It sensed its own greater reality in another framework entirely, from which it had only lately emerged — yet with which it was intimately connected. It felt itself surrounded, then, by the greater realities of Framework 2.

2. Jane and I watched an adaptation of the Westernized Cinderella fairy tale, of course. I almost didn’t bother looking it up, but I’m glad I did, for we learned that the power of Cinderella has been much longer-lasting and more pervasive than we’d realized: The Cinderella tale reaches back to China in the 9th century, and exists in hundreds of versions around the world.

For one thing, [the] Cinderella [tale] has a happy ending, of course, and is therefore highly unrealistic (with irony), according to many educators, since it does not properly prepare children for life’s necessary disappointments. Fairy godmothers are definitely a thing of the storyteller’s imagination, and many serious, earnest adults will tell you that daydreaming or wishing will get you nowhere.

[...] But as the word evolution is the title for a fine tale with a little truth in it, and much distortion, so also, must the realities of consciousness sometimes be explained in terms that you can understand and in terms of your own time concepts. So what you understand of reincarnation, and of the time terms involved, is what you have been told so that you could understand it, but it is a very simplified tale, indeed. [...] The other word is a fable or a tale. [...]

[...] I only know that the following were involved: a childhood nursery tale or/and a childhood toy like the cuddly cat doll I had as a child named Suzie that I thought the world of. [...]

[...] once I think the title of the—(Jane left this blank)—or the children’s tale appeared in the air in large block letters. [...]

[...] The feelings I was getting went even further, that religion or science or whatever weren’t attempts to discover truth—but to escape from doing so, to substitute some satisfying tale or story instead. [...]

Now, I am glad you liked my children’s tale. I do want to give our friend (Jane) more of a break, however, but let me tell you that in my own book I am not using children’s tales. You have been given children’s tales too often. Now they are lovely and there is meaning in them, and you here should understand the meaning of the tale I gave you. [...]

Now in this children’s tale pretend with me. [...] We imagined a physical reality and we imagined this moment and this time and there is no end to this children’s tale. There is never any end to a children’s tale. [...]

Now, I will tell you a children’s tale. [...]

And so, in this children’s tale, that is given to you in parable and in symbol, you came to have your being and yet when this universe, as you know it, was then brought into existence, you had to forget momentarily where you came from and you had to be created in flesh so that you could experience, in flesh, this new portion of creativity and so that you could, in your turn, create from that of which you were physically made and so you forgot your heritage, on purpose in a way. [...]

(9:10.) In those annals there is legend after legend, tale after tale, history after history describing civilizations that have come and gone, kings risen and fallen, and those stories have always represented cultures (spelled) of the psyche, and described various approaches used by man’s psyche as it explored its intersection with earthly experience. [...]

[...] You also had unaccountable imaginations and you told wild tales. Those tales were carried by word-of-mouth by the travelers and some of these ended up in Persian folklore, so if you were houseboys, you were imaginative houseboys. [...]

[...] Then elaborately:) Let us return to our tale of origins.

[...] Fairy tales are indeed often—though not always—carriers of a kind of underground knowledge, as per your discussion about Cinderella (also see the 824th session for Mass Events), and the greatest fairy tales are always those in which the greatest expectations win out: The elements of the physical world that are unfortunate can be changed in the twinkling of an eye through great expectations.

I will help each of you according to the extent to which you allow me to help you—and therein, indeed, lies a mighty tale. [...]

[...] What a tale of intrigue, personalities, and beliefs it was. And as soon as Seth opened the session, I understood at once how he was going to link that tale with Jane’s own hassles. [...]

[Ray] Bradbury’s stories, for example, are actually tales of a religious moralist. [...]

I want to emphasize again the poor reputation held by both science and religion concerning unofficial knowledge, an attitude clearly put forth in many tales and legends, from Adam and Eve to Pandora’s box to the Frankenstein monster. [...]

(This afternoon, frightened by a grim tale of lung cancer involving an acquaintance of ours, Jane made an abrupt effort to stop smoking. [...]

[...] I would also like to remind you both of the difference between direct experience and second-handed tales. [...]

[...] How much of your view of reality has been formed by direct experience, and now much has been formed through secondary sources, such as communications media, or tales brought to you by others?

[...] On the side of consciousness, it is a tale symbolically representing the birth of the conscious mind in the species as a whole, and the emergence of self-responsibility. [...]

[...] Perhaps it is a fancy tale told by other idiots as stupid as myself.” But if it is a fancy tale, it would behoove you to listen, for the moment that the flower says, “I deny, therefore, I deny the sunlight or the rain,” then the flower, indeed, would deny the grace of existence. [...]

[...] “The next line was to be: your current scientific and religious ideas of reality are like children’s tales.” [...]

Current ideas of reality are like children’s fairy tales. [...]

[...] Now, again, you have been told simple tales and they are delightful tales, but if you were not ready to hear more, you would not be in this room. [...]

[...] (long pause).... that the tale of Israel, with all of its wars and so forth, and its historical and biblical past, represents some ancient brilliant knowledge that man once had, of the self being so diverse as to behave as a nation of a million individuals, each looking for their homeland. [...]

[...] Myths and tales are formed in which those who love communicate, though one is dead while the other lives. [...]

Your tale about the Garden of Eden, then, is a legend about earth’s last beginning. [...]

[...] In Note 2 for Session 840, in Mass Events, I’m quoting Seth from the 838th session for March 5, 1979: “I want to avoid tales of the transmigration of the souls of men to animals, say—a badly distorted version of something else entirely.”