“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] I got there a few minutes early; she’d just been turned by Patty and was hurting a lot. [...] I massaged under her left knee when she asked me to, almost at once, and was pleased to see the motion in her leg, and head and shoulders, return once again. She said she’d reassured herself through the night and morning that it was okay to move, that she trusted her body, and had had some movements.

[...] I was only concerned that she not overdo it, and have sore muscles later. I told her often how great it was to see her move, and that her motions only meant that her body was more than willing to cooperate if allowed to. [...]

[...] She was all ready to try for a session, but I didn’t push for it yet. [...]

[...] I thought her fear of motion was involved, as well as old family stuff, and she agreed. [...]

[...] Sayre’s population was probably less than 6,500 when my two brothers and I were growing up there, and it isn’t much more today. My family lived in the neighborhood Seth describes from 1922 (when I was 3 years old) to 1931 (when I was 12), then moved to the opposite end of town. I remember quite well that I was most reluctant to move; the young boy didn’t want to leave his friends and the surroundings he loved. [...] They bought the “new” house, however, and it remained in the family until 1972 — a year after my father’s death, a year before my mother was to die.

[...] On impulse, Joseph had Ruburt call the real estate firm whose sign was on the house. The house was still owned by the man in question. [...] In the recognized reality shared by the Butts family there had been no intimate contact between Joseph’s mother and Mr. Markle (as I’ll call him). Joseph’s mother had been greatly struck by the man, however, and was convinced that she could have married him instead of the husband she had chosen. [...] Mr. Markle was, and is, wealthy. [...]

[...] Though the price was quite high, Ruburt and Joseph thought about buying it, and were taken through the home by the real estate people. A coincidence — a mere trick of fate that Joseph could be walking through the old man’s home,² and that Mr. Markle would be spending his last time in a nursing home, as had Joseph’s mother — meaningless but evocative that this house was for sale, and that the old man was insisting upon a price higher than the house is worth, just as Joseph’s mother insisted upon a high price for her own home, and determined to get it.³ Period. [...]

(Pause at 10:33.) The second house had no garage, and was not in as fashionable a neighborhood, but it had its own elegance. [...] Give us a moment … That house did not have the weight of Stella’s intent upon it, yet it was also a house that she had noticed, thinking it more grand than her own — one in which she could have been happy. It was her second choice.⁵

He (Ruburt) was bound and determined to explore the nature of reality.¹ … He wanted to protect himself until he had enough knowledge to know what he was doing. [...] There was no one he could turn to for instruction. I could have helped him further, but I was [part of what he was investigating] …

[...] Jane told me that at times she felt a distinct yearning for understanding by the others involved in the affair; yet, because of her participation in it, her confidence in knowing what she can do was strengthened significantly. And Seth, very briefly commenting upon the search while it was still in progress, remarked to an out-of-town group of visitors that Jane was endeavoring to use her psychic abilities on her own; and that the assurance she was gaining through her efforts would be much more valuable to her than any she might derive from Seth himself “doing all the work.”

(2. This note was added eight days later. [...]

(Seth continued:) He also began to see two poles in society one highly conventional and closed, in which he would appear as a charlatan; and another, yearning but gullible, willing to believe anything if only it offered hope, in which his activities would be misinterpreted, and to him [would be] fraudulent … There was a middle ground that he would have to make for himself … to make a bridge to those intellectuals who doubted, and yet maintain some freedom and spontaneity in order to reach those at the other end. [...]

[...] He was particularly frightened at the idea of living to an old age. [...] He wanted to be free of the body before that time was reached. Now in the two lives immediately previous he stayed with the body at one time until he was 87 and at another to the age of 92 and at a time when such age was quite unusual. [...] This was not pre-determined. It was a decision that he made. [...]

[...] He was a leader of a band of men and women. [...] At another time he was your daughter and you were the father. There was an over-protectiveness involved in all of your relationships, an exclusiveness. He was interested in music and the piano. He was afraid for his fingers and his hands. [...]

[...] At the same time you extended the consciousness of the animal, it became more than it was. Its consciousness was ready to leave and adapt another form. [...]

[...] The love which was awakened is to be directed in other areas, and you may speak when I am finished, but for this one time I will have my say. [...]

People could physically only see what was presently before their eyes—no postcards with pictures of the Alps, or far places. Visual data consisted of what the eye could see—and that was indeed a different kind of a world, a world in which a sketched object was of considerable value. [...] You must remember also that the art of the great masters was largely unknown to the poor peasants of Europe, much less to the world at large. Art was for those who could enjoy it—who could afford it. [...]

This was an entirely different kind of art than you have now. It was an attempt to objectify inner reality as it was perceived through a certain belief system. Whether the artist disagreed with certain issues or not, the belief system was there as an invisible framework. [...]

The house, as you recall, was highly formal, impeccably clean. [Mrs. Steffans] tried to live on the outside, while she was always concerned with inner issues, and it was on your parts indicative of a creative tension between the two. That is, you could certainly put that atmosphere to use, where she was unable to.

[...] This was an inevitable process. As it occurred, however, [man] began to make great distinctions between the world of the imagination and the world of nature, until finally he became convinced that the physical world was real and the imaginative world was not. [...]

The books are different, however, while the poetry carries the more clearly recognizable stamp of his accepted identity, so he was afraid that I would lead people astray unwittingly perhaps, through the energy and power of our communications. [...] Ruburt discovered how basically easy it was to have our sessions. But also how basically easy it was for his, say, Cézanne and James books also, for creatively he moved very quickly. [...]

(10:22.) It was in Mass Events and God of Jane that the usual concept of the Sinful Self was most directly and vigorously addressed, and in which the value of individual impulses was stressed with consistent vigor. [...]

(In the notes preceding the last session I wrote that Jane was to call Tam about the date of publication for Mass Events and God of Jane. She’d called, and Tam was to call back yesterday or today with the information. [...]

[...] I painted for an hour this morning while Jane slept, but felt a peculiar heaviness or loginess I was unaccustomed to. By noon I was having trouble keeping awake. [...]

[...] That personality was rather collarless (as spelled out on the board).” Also: “I was Frank Watts to learn humility.” [...] That “energy personality essence” did his best, always honestly, I’m sure, to help my wife, both as far as he was able to but also, as I came to believe, as far as he was allowed to. [...] Jane was living her challenges just like each one of us does, and her efforts were inextricably bound up with the world even as, I was sure, we were creating our human versions of the earth and its own reality. This taught us that even with Jane’s talents there was more, always more, to create and to learn from. [...]

In 1931 in Saratoga Springs, New York, Jane’s father, Delmer Roberts (or Del) chose to exercise the probability that he would leave his wife Marie and their daughter Jane, who was not yet three years old. [...] Jane was a second child following her mother’s earlier miscarriage. Already Marie was showing signs of arthritis. Jane and I came to believe that it was hardly accidental that her mother quickly became bedridden—for life—following the departure of her husband. Minnie Finn was killed by a hit-and-run speeding motorist one icy winter day on her way to the corner store to buy the young girl some shredded wheat for supper—a tragedy that Marie never stopped blaming her daughter for. [...] The young Jane spent almost two years in a Catholic orphanage for women while her mother was hospitalized. [...] The two women’s Catholicism became even stricter: it was often bolstered by the head of the local church coming to Sunday dinner at the old two-family house at 92 Middle Avenue, in one of the lower-income sections of Saratoga Springs.

[...] After some time on that particular day I realized that all was quiet—too quiet—out there in the living room. When I went out to see what Jane was up to I was greeted with her breakthrough accomplishment—one that, to put it mildly, was to lead to very unexpected challenges and growths in our lives: Jane held up a sheaf of typewriter paper upon which she had scribbled in large handwriting an essay that had come to her as fast as she could write it down: The Physical Universe as Idea Construction. [...] She’d felt as though she was out of her body some of the time, out on the first floor’s porch roof looking in at herself. [...] She was exhilarated, intrigued, cautious, wondering about its ideas—that basically each one of us creates our own reality in the most intimate terms, for example.

A strong saving grace in all of the personal and household turmoil she lived in, Jane told me often, was her relationship with her maternal grandfather, Joseph Burdo, her “Little Daddy,” as she called him because of his diminutive size. [...] He was a man of few words, yet he nurtured in his granddaughter a love of nature that she was to cherish for the rest of her life. In Appendix 1, Volume 1 of The “Unknown” Reality, published in 1977, I partially quote Seth as saying that Joseph Burdo was “Part of a very strong entity. [...] He lived alone in rented rooms and worked at various jobs in town; he was a doorman, a watchman. [...] He died in 1949 at 68, when Jane was 20 years old.

[...] First of all there was a retention of image. Second of all, there was quite separately an association because of the size of the card given as test object. In the second case the association was Ruburt’s, for on his own he picked up a file-card image, but he translated this into the image of a box in which such file cards are often kept.

[...] It was furnished by Lorraine Shafer, who witnessed this session. [...] The last session witnessed by Lorraine was the 195th, of October 4,1965. [...]

(The session was held in our large front room. [...] Her voice was rather dry.)

[...] Moreover, it was one I had given her myself when she witnessed the 172nd session of July 26,1965. Handing her the two envelopes and the two pieces of Bristol, I had asked her to pick a test object, seal it up, and give it to me the next time we saw her, without telling me what the test object was. [...]

Now, however, we come to Hiroshima, where this highly destructive bomb was exploded (on August 6, 1945) — and for what reason? [...] The intent to save American lives was certainly “good” — at the expense of the Japanese this time. In that regard, America’s good was not Japan’s, and an act taken to “save life” was also designed to take individual lives.

[...] It was because Hitler was so convinced of the existence of evil in the individual psyche, that he set up all of his rules and regulations to build up and preserve “Aryan purity.” The Jews’ idea was also a dark one, in which their own rules and regulations were set to preserve the soul’s purity against the forces of evil. [...]

[...] To attain that end, Hitler was quite willing to sacrifice the rest of humanity. [...] That unfortunate chant is behind the beliefs of many cults — scientific and religious — and Hitler’s Aryan kingdom was a curious interlocking of the worst aspects of religion and science alike, in which their cultish tendencies were encouraged and abetted.

The political arena was the practical working realm in which those ideals were to find fruition. Hitler’s idea of good was hardly inclusive, therefore, and any actions, however atrocious, were justified.

[...] The twin who was in the military found his sense of identity as a soldier within the system, but he had great faith in the system... in what he was doing... The other twin was more given to a statesmanlike sort of thing... and was in fact an orator although he had another profession...It included oration to people... [...] You sort of resented the fact that this twin brother of yours had this organization in which he found support and in which he felt so a part because he was absolutely certain of the aims and goals of the organization and he was a good soldier within it... [...] The other brother was battling for what the organization wanted, and served the organization well... [...] This division is bringing up memories subconsciously, in this past life where there was this division between you and your brother.

[...] You had a brother and the brother was with you at the time of the accident.

[...] don’t know whether or not it was a riding academy... [...]

(Jane rather surprised us by opening the session in a voice that was surprisingly deep and somewhat loud. I can say that the voice was somewhat deeper than her voice in the 170th session, though lacking of course anything like the sheer volume displayed in that session. At times it was almost a bass voice, quite vibrant, produced without visible strain. Indeed, Seth was in an almost jocular mood.

(In the 136th session such an interruption was enough of a shock to Jane to cause Seth to end the session. [...] Before she was seated she had reentered the trance state, and was speaking. [...] Her voice was still quite deep.)

[...] I was then surprised to note that Jane had come out of her trance with no difficulty, and that her eyes were open. In fact, it was she who answered the door, to speak briefly with someone who was looking for another apartment on our floor.

(Tonight’s session was witnessed by Lorraine Shafer and Bill Macdonnel. The last session witnessed by Bill was the 133rd, of February 17,1965. [...]

[...] Your love for him in the beginning was strong enough to release you to some degree, so he knew it was in you. He felt it, and he was furious after the taste of it to have it for any reason withheld.

[...] When he annoyed you by thrashing about in bed, this was of course what the thrashing about in bed was supposed to do—remind you of his presence there.

This was still however you see quite selfish, in that you are the person he wants. He was willing to do it. [...]

Now: Much of the information, and the most pertinent part, is buried in your files—I tried to give the data in various ways, although it was quite definitely given also in terms of the physical relationship several times; and only at one particular period did you try to take advantage of it.

[...] The aggression that he feared was not so great and big and powerful and black and hairy and threatening as he thought. Instead, it was a part of himself and very small, fish size, you see, and easy to squash and kick. It was not this giant that you feared, and it was easy to rid yourself of this. Now, in this case, the fish was not a probable fish in another reality. It was a portion, however, of his own energy. [...]

[...] However, the dream taught him that the violence within himself was not big and threatening and did not need to be feared. He could use it as a symbol to see how small it was in comparison to the whole inner self and how easy, therefore, it was to rid himself of it. He cried however because, you see, he realized that this was part of his priceless energy that he had expended, uselessly, and in the tears lay the lesson. [...]

[...] I was thinking of the fish again. When you say the lilies of the field may, lose a leaf or two, but still have a great deal of protection, I was wondering had Ned’s fish, perhaps. In his case it was only an image, but in my case, suppose I had a probable fish. [...]

There was a civilization, and I am writing this in my book and some of you know of it—a civilization, in your terms, in your dim past, in which a group of human beings tried to form a physical body that could not act violently and when violence was threatened the body automatically closed off from action. [...] It would seem perhaps to you, that this was a highly idealistic race and that they grew in strength and beauty, but they were not facing the issues clearly, you see. [...]

[...] That she was again telling me that she was getting better when I could see that she was getting worse. [...] And it seemed to me that certain parts of her personality were quite ready to continue such behavior until death—the final end, the dissolution in which host and ailments disappeared together, and all conflict was resolved. Was this to be the “redemption” Seth had talked about a couple of years ago, and that I’d tried to deal with in the intro for Dreams? [...] An understandable-enough resolution, I said, and one I couldn’t argue with basically, since such a course could logically be the one chosen by some personalities—but it was also one that I didn’t choose at this time. [...]

[...] Even if I’d helped her create such a lifestyle in the past, unwittingly, I was certainly dead-set against it now, and had been for several years. I was constantly appalled and amazed that she’d let her seemingly hopeless condition and situation drag on day after day, until such a crisis point as we now faced was reached, where we now had little room to maneuver. [...]

[...] Just before going outside I’d told Jane a capsule of my current thinking—that we were at the end of the line that she was going to end up hospitalized again, or in an institution where she could receive constant care. [...] I’d mentioned while she was still in bed this morning that I was going to call Dr. Kardon tomorrow morning, and tell her I wanted Jane back in the hospital. [...]

[...] Last night she was in agony in bed—all night. [...] I was filled with impotent rage at the turn events have taken for us, but said little. [...]

[...] Jane reported that she was dissociated as usual for a first break. She was as surprised as I was that Seth had announced a poor connection. We had no conscious ideas as to why this should be, and indeed this was the first time this problem had come up during the sessions.

(At Oswego, I was awakened by a party of college students in a nearby residence hall. This time I was roused by the tenants downstairs, who came home at about 2:30 AM, with company, and sat in the backyard talking. It was a very hot and humid night.

(My chest came to feel that it was much wider, much broader and stronger and thicker—perhaps a yard wide. [...] I was aware of a greatly enlarged feeling in each of the fingers to some degree, as before, but this time the feeling that my fingers were somehow united into a pawlike or clublike unit was dominant.

[...] Jane was dissociated as usual. She did not realize she was using so many pauses in giving the above data. [...]

[...] Jane said she was dissociated as usual for a first break. [...] She was aware that the material was good, yet at the same time she felt annoyed and distracted. [...]

(As it developed tonight’s session was a short one. [...] There was talk at work this morning that the whole group might visit us this evening. [...]

[...] The session was held in our small back room. [...] Her voice was quiet, her pace quite slow and with pauses.)

(Jane said she was even conscious of my movements, slight as they were. [...] Even though the window was on the side of the house, we immediately became aware of some traffic noise.

Maybe I’d produced all I was meant to. Maybe the fire of my life was coming to its own natural conclusion. [...] Maybe that course was better than the determination and painful discomforts that might be necessary to prolong lifely existence. So I was to some extent only half alarmed to hear from some strange inner existence my own voice slow down. Tremors appeared in it, as if the vowels and symbols had endless gaps—uneven edges—and some part of me was escaping like smoke even between my words.

If earlier, however, Ruburt had the erroneous idea that he was going too fast—or would or could—and had to restrain himself and exert caution, now he received the medical prognosis, the “physical proof” that such was not the case, and in fact that the opposite was true: He was too slow. [...] And if once a doctor had told him years ago how excellent was his hearing, the medical profession now told him that his slowness (his thyroid deficiency) had helped impair his hearing to an alarming degree.

At the end of May and early in June 1981 we published two books involving years of effort: Seth-Jane’s The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, and Jane’s The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto. I was positive that those volumes contained much excellent work. I was also positive that with their publication, Jane’s symptoms—especially her walking difficulties—became considerably worse. On the surface at least, it was as though some powerful portion of her psyche were exacting a grim compensation for the books’ appearance in the marketplace. Perhaps, I thought, that portion was creating a physical disability that allowed Jane to publish forbidden material while protectively isolating herself—and me—from rejection by the physical world. [...]

Actually, I was amazed at the opacity of my perception: It seemed that once again I was just beginning to understand that Jane had chosen to embark upon a journey in which she would explore herself and the world in intensely physical and emotional terms—in contrast to the more intellectual ways by which she and I have usually conducted our searches, through the Seth material and our own inquiring minds…. I was frightened by her resolve, and by my own acquiescent participation in such a plan. [...]

[...] She was obviously relieved that her temperature was dropping. [...] She said she tried to explain to Jeff how she was uncomfortable and impatient in hydro, but got nowhere. She could see he knew nothing of what she was talking about, so finally she just quit.

[...] He was very pleased with her progress. [...] Jane asked him why her right leg was shorter than the left one, and Jeff explained that the break had healed but that the bones were out of alignment, hence the shortness. [...]

(Jane said Jeff was plainly surprised at her improvements, but that at the same time he was condemning her to staying in bed. [...]

This entire belief system was detrimental enough, when you were devoted to writing and painting as these are generally understood. When Ruburt’s psychic abilities began to show themselves, however, those same beliefs made both of you even more cautious than before, and more worried about reprisal from others — and as far as Ruburt was concerned, more worried about criticism or scorn. [...]

[...] It was the best feeling of its kind she’d ever had, “as though this energy was coming from a very distant place, or great depths,” yet she was aware of words as she spoke them. [...] Yet Jane’s trance was very obviously an excellent one. Now however, all Jane remembered was that the voice said she was reaching beyond the usual Seth personality.

(The energy sweeping her along was so strong, Jane said, that she now wondered how she would have ended the session had not the voice suggested this; but I could reassure her that from observation now I could tell when her trance was very deep, and knew enough now to end it when necessary. Jane said that tonight she was as “un-me” as she had ever been. In retrospect it was a bit frightening—there was a terrific sense of power and energy. She hadn’t been as “cozily Seth” as usual; less cozily a personality in our terms; but she also didn’t know who or what was responsible, aside from the great energy.

(She began speaking in trance as usual however; her start was late because of her lethargy; she “hung around” a bit waiting to see if a session would be held. But once begun the trance was good, eyes opening as usual, pauses as usual.)

[...] “The next line was to be: your current scientific and religious ideas of reality are like children’s tales.” This receiving of more data as she comes out of trance is a sign, a recent one, that Jane’s trance was deep.

(I remembered very little about the bow, yet subjectively I was sure it had been taken from a greeting card of some kind. [...] I did not recall the card the ribbon came from, nor why I had removed it—if I was the one who had done so. [...] The bow was in poor condition, and I assumed I had carried it home in a coat pocket sometime last winter.

[...] Although she was tired her pace was good. She was not smoking.)

(Jane’s pace was faster now, and her eyes had begun to open as she sipped some wine occasionally. If she was tired she gave no indication. I felt it was going to be one of those sessions where she became really involved with the material.

[...] Jane said she was really “out”, or that Seth was really “in.” She was aware of nothing but the material while speaking, and felt the ideas were good. [...]