“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Last night Jane was extremely uncomfortable lying on her back; the bedsore on her left hip bothered her endlessly, she said. [...] She was on her back when I got to 330 today, and felt much better, although not at ease. [...]

Margaret’s visit was somewhat involved, as was your visit to Joe’s room.

(At the close of yesterday’s session I wrote that I visited Joe Bumbalo after leaving Jane at 7:00 p.m. While I was up in his room, 522, Margaret went down to say hello to Jane. [...]

(4:44.) Ruburt’s unfortunate evening was the result of his own fears about the body — related to the fact that he then picked up Joe’s own dire fears, and these fueled his own.

(The evening was very cold—10° —as we sat for the session. The house was quiet except for the rumble of the furnace. [...]

(Jane was bleary—really “out of it”—when she said that she’d try for a session at 8:55. [...]

[...] His state of mind during the day then varies, so that with his files (of poetry) today he was in a highly relaxed, creative, productive, mental level, one that served to cushion his mind from the critical reproaches he can often give himself, and therefore bodily relaxation could continue. [...]

The festival incident of the dream state was highly fascinating, and it did represent a particular state of consciousness above all—one in which reality is perceived in a different fashion. [...]

(This session was held in our bedroom. [...] The quiet was quite unusual. [...] Evidently the new setting was also a little strange to Jane, for she did not begin speaking until 9:02.

[...] Jane was dissociated as usual, and said she was not aware of speaking so slowly. [...]

[...] Her pace was average at the beginning, but became progressively slower as the session wore on.)

Our last session was an extremely fruitful one, and much of that material will be important in our future discussions.

(Once again it was a very warm evening —about 80 degrees, and we had the fan on. Actually it was very pleasant in the house, with all the windows and doors wide open. [...]

[...] Still, Ruburt was uneasy that the woman would accept the situation so calmly. Such recognition seemed almost unnatural: where was her will to live? [...]

[...] You can’t verbalize it, but it was illuminating and helpful. I suppose because you thought you could overcome it, and it was afterward that I got so relaxed. [...]

[...] She was very relaxed—very —but felt Seth around and decided to have a session, or at least try to. [...]

(9:35.) But if man felt suddenly alone and isolated, he was immediately struck by the grand variety of the world and its creatures. Each creature apart from himself was a new mystery. He was enchanted also by his own subjective reality, the body in which he found himself, and by the differences between himself and others like him, and the other creatures. [...]

Basically, what made him feel good was good. He was gifted with strong clear instincts that were meant to lead him toward his own greatest development, to his own greatest fulfillment, in such a way that he also helped to bring about the highest potentials of all of the other species of consciousness (intently). His natural impulses were meant to provide inner directives that would guide him in just such a direction, so that he sought what was the best for himself and for others.

On the one hand, man did indeed feel that he had fallen from a high estate, because he remembered that earlier freedom of dream reality—a reality in which the other creatures were still to some degree (underlined) immersed.³ Man’s mind, incidentally, at that point had all the abilities that you now assign to it: the great capacity for contrast of imagination and intellect, the drive for objectivity and for subjectivity (softly), the full capacity for the development of language—a keen mind that was as brilliant in any caveman, say, as it is in any man on a modern street.

In a fashion (underlined), it was a great creative and yet cosmic game that consciousness played with itself, and it did represent a new kind of awareness, but I want to emphasize that each version of All That Is is unique. [...]

(There were welcome similarities between our sighting of today and that of last March: Again, the weather was very warm for this time of year; again, a fine rain was falling. [...]

[...] (Pause.) This method is even more effective if you choose from your past a scene in which a choice was involved that was important to you.

[...] Therefore, the so-called egotistical consciousness was not given complete sway. [...] An exterior separation had to occur for a while, in which consciousness forgot, egotistically speaking, that it was a part of nature, and pretended to be apart.

It was known, however — and unconsciously written in the cells and mind and heart — that this procedure would only go so far. When man’s consciousness was sure of itself it would not need to be so narrowly focused. [...]

Using such “a psychic computer,” information was sorted and resorted, probabilities examined, some discarded because the conditions were not apropos. Miss Dineen this evening was looking for a small adventure. [...] The meeting then originally was “planned” in Framework 2. In case your young visitor—the woman (Carol) now—did not meet you, she had insisted in her mind that she would meet someone who knew you or had some personal connection somehow.

[...] During their visit the woman, Carol, several times expressed the thought that she returned the second time, to see if we were home, because “it was meant to be,” or words to that effect. She also said that if we hadn’t been home, that was meant to be also. [...]

(The encounter with the Canadian couple was so recent that as we sat for the session it hadn’t occurred to Jane and me to hope that Seth would discuss the affair, or to even ask that he do so. I was impressed by the meeting on the street, but equally taken with the fact that Hal had known someone who’d known James. [...]

That James however is, of course, as he says the William James that he was —and yet is no more the same William James, as the child and the adult are one person and yet are not. [...] The meeting was real in your terms, yet the manipulations of consciousness behind it were largely unknown.

Joseph recently had an experience that disturbed him, simply because it was difficult to interpret even in the light of his understanding about the nature of the self. [...] So Joseph allowed himself some freedom — and then was almost scandalized with the results.

[...] It was obvious that she was in a deep trance.)

The material I picked up about my father’s psychic intents was at first very bewildering. Hinted at was such a diffusion of consciousness that at the time individuality seemed to have little meaning. [...]

[...] (Jane’s happened on Monday afternoon, December 9, while mine took place this afternoon.) Jane’s was especially clear, featuring a communication from Stella Butts — who was seemingly quite “herself.” [...]

[...] The choice was up to them. [...] They know me and they have known me well in past lives, you see, so I was not the stranger to them that they thought I was. [...]

[...] Our slight friend Ruburt here was indeed upon occasion, a rather lecherous old fellow, and I was a saintly type. I was, forgive me, his mother. [...]

[...] He was either so intellectual that you could not understand him when he spoke or so intuitive that you could not understand him when he spoke. The duty he imposed upon himself this time was to integrate these two strong aspects of himself, and he has had his difficulties in doing so. [...]

[...] I simply wanted you to know that I was here, as I said I would be. [...]

[...] (Jane was so addressed last night in ESP class by one of her students, a male.) He did idealize you in the early days of your relationship, and then made the transition that he mentioned. He was ignoring and hiding his fears to protect you as well as himself.

An example was the Sunday at your mother’s, when he was afraid of the cramp in the leg, which did not come in the way that he feared.

[...] The repression of fears was latched onto for the reasons given in a recent session—the habitual syndrome—do you recall?

There was a basis, therefore. [...]

[...] I could see that Jane was not only sad that the long project was finished for her, but uneasy, too; she was suddenly set loose, released from a framework that had come to be very familiar over the last 14½ months. [...]

[...] With the arrival of warmer weather we did take an occasional break from psychic work, but for the most part the sessions were held regularly even though Seth was through with “Unknown” Reality. Some of them were private, but Seth also covered a number of interesting topics of a more general nature — material we’d like to see published eventually. (His comments in the 750th session as to why “Unknown” Reality was written, are quoted in the Introductory Notes for Volume 1.)

In a way, it is meant to familiarize you with elements of your own reality of which you may have been unaware, and to introduce you to certain subjective states of mind that are automatically aroused because of the manner in which the book was produced. [...]

[...] At the same time, I was thinking as I wrote that Seth’s sentence, above: “You cannot understand perceived events unless you understand who perceives them,” embodied one of his best ideas in “Unknown” Reality.)

(“I took a nap, and awakened remembering this dream experience: First I was in a room asking a group of people about ‘the council’ — I wanted to know if there was such a thing. [...] I became somewhat frightened and wished to return; I think I was afraid of being carried away too completely. [...]

Ruburt, I understand, was looking for the council. He was looking for counsel of a most exalted kind, and so it became the council — an excellent term, by the way, standing for the most intimate and yet exalted counsel possible for any individual.

He was looking for a state of higher consciousness that would represent a unique and yet universal source of information and revelation. [...] He could not assimilate the information, and became frightened, to some extent at least, at the vastness of the experience involved, as if the ancient yet new knowledge that he sought for his individual reasons was so encompassing that his own individuality would have trouble handling it while retaining its own necessary frame of reference. [...]

End of dictation — that was dictation.

In scientific terms there was no fallout involved in the disaster at Jonestown. Yet there was of course a psychological fallout, and effects that will be felt throughout the land by people in all walks of life. [...] There was fanaticism, a closed mental environment, the rousing of hopes toward an ideal that seemed unachievable because of the concentration upon all of the barriers that seemed to stand in its way.

[...] This practice was also followed by those at Jonestown. Loyalty to friends and family was discouraged, and so those in Jonestown had left strong bonds of intimacy behind. They felt threatened by the world, which was painted by their beliefs so that it presented a picture of unmitigated evil and corruption. [...]

(Jane was quite upset before the session this evening, and I’m the one who was responsible for her state. [...]

(I didn’t get carried away by the idea this evening, but I was certainly taken with it as we talked. [...]

[...] Jane was to call KR at a conference in Wappinger’s Falls, NY; she tried a number of times, always to be put off by a rather unpleasant and officious woman who was always saying that KR was “in conference” and couldn’t be disturbed. [...] The two never did make contact, so we figured it was for the best, for whatever reasons. According to our phone bill, Jane’s last attempt at contact was on December 5, 1980. [...] That is, if that secretary, or whatever she was, was relaying your messages....” [...]

(Our family of raccoons was stirring a bit in the fireplace behind my chair as I sat facing Jane on the couch. [...] She was very relaxed. [...]

[...] But she was sure she was aware of this while she was speaking.)

[...] Jane was dissociated as usual. Her eyes closed, then opened and she was out of the trance. [...]

[...] Her voice was quiet, her pace rather rapid even though she used pauses.)

[...] Jane was dissociated as usual for a first delivery. [...]

[...] Jane was dissociated as usual. This was the second time recently that her eyes had opened while she gave experimental material; perhaps this will become more usual.)

(Jane was indisposed. [...]

A tie-up of sorts this evening, in which Dr. Instream was involved. [...]

(The night was a very hot and humid one. [...] As it was, the evening’s work was rather brief —if extremely interesting.)

[...] The search for knowledge on your parts was personal. [...]

It often seemed safer, even, to keep a certain distance from the material, lest you accept it too uncritically, and Ruburt’s critical stance was usually simply an unneeded defense, so that he could keep footing in both worlds at once. [...]

Ruburt has often felt that it was too late, and that you could not help him —for you would sabotage his efforts, as it seemed he himself did. [...]

[...] Several people said they thought his material was old, given many times before and forgotten. Others thought it was new, or at least totally original with the Seth material as such.¹⁰ Then Seth returned:)

6. When this session was held, on the first of February, 1974, Jane was ready to begin the final draft of her manuscript for Adventures. In Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality, see Note 3 for Seth’s Preface.

[...] [Incidentally, Seth began Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality on February 4, 1974 — three days after this session was held.]

(Fortunately, class member Sue Watkins managed to tape all but the first few paragraphs of the session, but even the sense of those was taken down in longhand by another student while Sue got our recorder going. [...]

Dream of last night**** I dreamed that my entire head was being completely cleared, despite all laws or rules to the contrary... I think the healing was taking place as I dreamed; that is, that the dream may have involved an actual physical experience too. Don’t know what was meant by: all rules to the contrary... [...]

(By 8:55 PM Jane was uncomfortable and nervous because she didn’t know what Seth was going to talk about. This feeling was heightened of course because she was also not sure whether she would sit with her eyes closed during the session, or pace about. [...]

[...] Her eyes were closed for the most part, although she was smoking as the session began. Her voice was a little stronger than usual; it might also be noted that for the most part the pauses she uses during delivery are not now as long.)

[...] Now her voice was louder and her pace faster. [...]

[...] Jane was well dissociated, hardly being able to recall anything of what she had said. [...]