“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] This took place while she was speaking, and I continued writing without interruption. Quite naturally, it seemed, I now realized that I was seeing a robed figure standing in a doorway, just beyond Jane’s right shoulder as she faced me seated in her rocker. The figure was perhaps three feet tall, standing facing me but with the light coming from the doorway behind so that the face was in shadow.

[...] 23 Tam Mossman wrote us that Hans Holzer would consider doing the introduction for the Seth Material, provided he was listed as co-author. This was quite unexpected by us, and the offer was turned down. We had known Mossman might ask Holzer to do an intro, but Holzer’s demand to co-author the book was not suspected by us.

[...] She said she knew what blocking Seth was referring to; she felt herself “come up” just before break. The material Seth wanted to discuss was about Jane and Ruburt and Jane’s writing. Jane believed it was an extension of the arrangement Seth mentioned briefly on page 124, when he talked about Jane accepting inspiration and ideas from Ruburt without realizing it.

(Last week in one of her ESP classes, Jane found herself speaking as Ruburt, knowing she was doing so. There was evidently strong telepathic/clairvoyant communication with another student when this occurred, for as Ruburt, Jane, while conscious, described a certain ancient scene set about a campfire; Jane and her student, also female, described the same scene. [...]

(9:29.) It made good sense enough to take the artificial thyroid that my body obviously was demanding. [...] So Dr. Kardon’s visit was behind Robby’s suggestion that I look at my own sinful-self material, and I intuitively felt that the time was probably right. [...]

[...] By then it was 9:00 PM, but she read a lot of it and said she was picking up some valuable insights.

But in any case she decided that I had it, and since I had already shown some evidence in my body, the next thing was how to treat it. Even discounting for the present the more tricky drugs, drugs with many side effects, quite severe sometimes, there was a drug less dangerous. [...]

One line I’d forgotten put the situation rather clearly, though: I was afraid that Seth’s work and my own might have some fatal flaw to which I was blind, so that I suppose by trusting the inner self and individual inspiration, I might actually also be opening up that horrendous Pandora’s box. [...]

[...] It would prove he was being cherished. The part-time job on your part was of course a compromise, but loving you, he felt it was at the expense of your creative output and purposes.

[...] He was not encouraged, but discouraged from expressing normal anger. He was afraid of his mother’s wrath. [...]

[...] When I started painting, I was appalled to discover my ignorance. [...] I was willing to spend the time necessary to master painting. [...]

(I have for some time thought that Jane needed to sell her writings as a means of justifying her life—whether these writings were her best work was, in that sense, immaterial; she couldn’t possibly wait until her writing was a polished art before beginning to market it. [...]

[...] For a while I was not in Rome, but held my religious call elsewhere. [...] I died of trouble with my stomach because I was such a glutton. My name was not Clement (to Theodore), though Clement is a lovely name. I was originally called Protonius. [...] Unless I summon the self that I was at that time, the memories for details are not that clear. [...] Now some of these jewels, as well as the money, went for expeditions that you do not realize were adopted at that time, having to do with commerce and ships sent through Africa, and this interest had to do with my later life when I was involved with the oregano. [...]

I was very fond of my first mistress, whose name was Maria. [...] I did believe implicitly in the God in which I was brought up, and in that belief. It was only later that I wondered how such a God would choose me for such a position and then I began to wonder. [...]

I had two illegitimate children (laughter), a mistress that sneaked into my private studies, a magician that I kept in case I did not do too well on my own, a housekeeper who was pregnant every year that I had her, and three daughters who joined a nunnery because I would not have them, and I am referred to in barely three paltry lines, for my reign did not last very long. [...] And I was ambitious, as all intelligent young men of that time were. I did not go for the military, and so there was nothing to do but go to the Church. [...]

Now I want you all to know, and it will please you no end, that you have an authority present, for I was a pope in 300 AD. I was not a very good pope. [...]

(By now Jane and I were very curious, since this was the first time we had ever had the chance to resume with a contact made previously on the board. [...]

(“What was our relationship?”)

(“Which one of us was the father?”)

(“What was your relationship to us, Frank Watts?”)

[...] It was hard for Jane to open her eyes. As before, she did not leave the trance state completely; she was very sleepy and quiet, but when the session resumed her manner was once again quite active and energetic, eyes open often, voice good, pace rather fast, etc. [...]

[...] The experience had been somewhat frightening, and she was quite certain it was not a nightmare.

[...] She was quite sleepy at break, and said Seth was “putting her under” in order to talk about the thought-form and projection experience of last night with the least amount of distortion. [...]

Now the evil which Ruburt imagined he was projecting outward does not exist, but because he believed it did, he formed his materialization from his fears. It was the shape of the desolation he had felt last weekend. [...]

(The session was held again in our front room, and was not interrupted. [...] Her pace was rather slow, and she was smoking as the session began.)

[...] As stated, it originally was quite thick, so I peeled the top layer from it, containing the design printed in red, to insert into the double envelopes. [...] When this thin layer was enclosed between the regular two pieces of Bristol, then sealed in the usual double envelope, it was not possible to judge by feel, or weight, that it was in any way somewhat different from the usual envelope object.

(The envelope object for tonight’s 35th experiment was a beer coaster that I picked up from our table last Saturday evening, at our favorite dining and dancing establishment here in Elmira. It was the one I had used. [...] It was sealed in the usual double envelope between two pieces of Bristol.

(It was now time for what we thought would be the 41st and 42nd Dr. Instream experiments. [...] She was not smoking. On the whole her pace was not slow, although broken by many short pauses. [...]

Doris was having all kinds of problems. [...] In these relationships she was the aggressor. [...] Doris was smart enough to see this, but each time she was certain that there was something about the new man that made him more eligible—or at least more liable to accept her advances. In the meantime she was dreadfully lonely, for she would refuse dates with “ordinary” men, since they seemed so inferior compared to the new idol.

[...] Later, in a break, I received several impressions of a past life of Mrs. Lowe’s. While a general discussion was going on, I “saw” her near a riding academy in fourteenth-century France; and then I saw her and Rev. Lowe as twins in Greece, when he was an orator and she a soldier. There were other details, but the interesting thing was that Mrs. Lowe told me afterward that she was really crazy about horses, and that Greece and France were the only countries in which she had any great interest.

It was just last week that Jon called again. Sally was in the hospital, after a bad attack during which her heart had stopped for a short time. Jon was torn between praying for her recovery and for her release by death, and he asked if we’d have a session on the matter.

I did promise to hold a Seth session for him, and later I was glad I did. Not only was the session a help to Jon, but it contains some excellent information on what can go on while a person is supposedly unconscious, in coma, and what we experience just before and after death.

[...] It was very noisy; a neighbor clipping a hedge and machinery of some kind grinding away at the new bridge site. [...] I was getting out of a car, with a man, and we were on our way toward a house in which a healer or physician lived. [...] someone who knew our way of thinking and what I was up to. This vanished almost at once when I snapped to, feeling that a bug or something was crawling up my leg. It was; an ant. [...]

[...] I was suddenly aware of a crazy feeling in .... [...] (don’t know how to explain this either but my ‘astral self’ was thinking this. [...] On Wednesday night there was definite improvement in my right knee and leg particularly; and left one too.

[...] Jane was easily out of trance. Once, she said, she felt that she was growing “smaller” as she sat in her rocker while Seth spoke. She felt that she was an old man, little, tiny... at the same time as Jane she knew she wasn’t shrinking but that it was a subjective experience. [...]

(The dream book, which is now at Ace for consideration, was involved. [...] The gist of these seemed to be that the dream book, its struggles in creation, etc., was involved, and that it was to be accepted, finally, by Ace. [...]

(Seth was still around during break. [...] Jane, who was in the kitchen, hurried back to her chair just as Seth resumed at 9:44.)

For some time he has identified himself with the dream book, and projected his own problems upon it so that it bore the brunt, so to speak; and if it was a failure, then he was a failure and in very definite terms.

I was between projects after The God of Jane. [...] I asked for some ideas from my “natural spontaneous self,” and on August 5, 1980, I dreamed that a moving van with me in it was itself being moved by a larger vehicle ahead of some planned time. There was a squabble over seating arrangements which was finally resolved. [...]

[...] Yet after the two-month layoff I was nervous too; as I always was after any extended “trance vacation.” [...] I didn’t really worry that such things might happen, but I was uneasily aware that they could. [...]

It was okay. After the layoff, there was Seth poised psychologically once again (for over the thousandth time). [...] Rob was ready with his notebook and pen. [...]

[...] I was finishing work on one of my own books, The God of Jane. Rob was preparing Seth’s The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events for publication. [...]

Now: the message of the Christ entity was, in religious terms “You are all children of God—the ‘sinner’ as well as the saint.” Indeed, according to the original Christ thesis, while a man could sin, no man was identified as a sinner. He was not identified with his failures or limitations, but instead with his potential.

Christ’s thesis was inserted into a Jewish tradition dealing deeply with guilt, and the new thesis was meant to temper that tradition, and to spread beyond it. [...]

[...] Christ well knew that that statement was indeed true, but men who condemned themselves, who considered themselves sinners, would not know what to ask for, except punishment to relieve their guilt. Hence he stressed time and time again that each person was a child of God.

[...] To be a child of God was to trust in your own worth. [...] The child of God would automatically find salvation, and everyone was a child of God. [...]

[...] Jane was again well dissociated. She said she felt as though the Seth voice was pulling her along. Her trance was deep, she felt very free, she said. She remarked that the feeling was similar to the two Father Trainor episodes, of February 11,1965 and May 30,1965; I too had had the thought that there was a similarity here, and thought I detected a hint of a brogue in Jane’s delivery at times. [...]

(The session was held in our living room again, and traffic noise was not a problem, nor were there any interruptions. [...] As it turned out her idea was a good one.

[...] Jane was well dissociated. [...] She again had no idea that she had been speaking so rapidly; even Lorraine wondered if Seth was trying to find out just how fast she could take shorthand. I would say that Jane’s delivery was faster than ever before, her voice loud.

(Jane grew up in an Irish neighborhood in Saratoga Springs, NY, and Father Trainor was an Irish priest of the old school. [...] His girth was extensive, and he read poetry to Jane and her mother, Marie, every Sunday after dinner, with a booming voice and a dramatic flourish. Jane herself is one-quarter Irish, although as she has often said, she grew up thinking she was Irish, period.

[...] I’d thought it was the opposite, of course. JA also seemed surprised, and double-checked his data to make sure he was correct. Moreover, when the new lenses were assembled in his machine for me to check my vision, I was able to read 15-20 [or 20-15?], another improvement over the normal 20-20.

[...] of course, was very upset by my chest difficulty, telling me after her nap that she was very worried, bothered of course by the fact that she’d asked me to wash windows. [...] I told her that I agreed the situation was somewhat discouraging, since it seemed I hadn’t learned much from all of this upset of the last couple of months. [...]

[...] I thought suggestion was operating, that I was telling myself I needed new glasses, whereas before receiving the notice I’d felt okay. [...]

[...] Indeed, today was the first day in some time—at least a number of days—when I hadn’t noticed some sort of chest symptoms of some degree, light or stronger. It took me a while to realize that Leonard’s arrival was hardly a coincidence, although I had trouble being specific mentally about just what I meant by that understanding. [...]

(At no time was Jane aware of Seth as a personality, and neither of us saw any signs of him or from him. One of my concerns when Jane asked me to speak to Seth at the beginning of the session, was whether my speaking would bring on a regular Seth session, but this didn’t develop; and the method gave us both confidence for like experiments in the future. Jane said my speaking was a great help for her, and did act as a protective device. My own idea was for Jane to make emotional or feeling contact with Blanche, without whatever emotions she encountered becoming too intrusive and so interfering with any data we might get.

[...] If play acting was involved, Jane said later, it was on a completely subconscious level where she would possess no egotistical knowledge that such was transpiring.

[...] Her voice was quite low and I often asked her to repeat herself. [...] “This is Blanche,” was one of the first things she said, after I had deliberately called her Jane for reassurance, while thinking she had probably made contact with Blanche, and was somewhat unpleasantly involved in a sickroom episode.

[...] Jane spoke to Seth in a quiet voice for some little time, but no results were obtained; nothing out of the ordinary was noticed by either of us. Jane then suggested that I speak to Seth, since I was used to doing so; her hope being that by going into trance on her own she might contact a survival personality—namely, Blanche Price.

[...] I was especially intrigued by the “fact” that my birth month, June, was shown in red—meaning that it was a danger month and that I should be very careful in life. [...]

[...] When I came back from the john, she suddenly was able to grasp the right edge of the papers with her right hand—a totally unexpected development, one that I hadn’t expected yet at all. [...] I stressed that it was a very important step, and that maybe soon I could take apart Personal Reality, as I had suggested doing some weeks ago, so that she could read it page by page. [...]

(By 3:50, when she was reading the last two pages of the session, Jane said that already her holding the pages that way was almost automatic, though by the time she finishes a page her left hand is beginning to get tired. [...]

(Now Christina was sounding off in jumbled English and Russian, singing bits and pieces of Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday, Georgia, and so forth. [...] Now Christine was bothering me a little.)

(“Seth, this morning when I asked Jane what chlorophyll was, she replied that it was a mental enzyme. [...]

(“How old was she?”)

[...] I was concerned because I thought I had given her the wrong answer when Fawcett rejected the book.”)

(“What was the image our friend Bill Macdonnel saw in the rocking chair, in his bedroom in Niagara Falls, in December of 1961?”)

By this time it was somewhat later in the day. [...] There was a letter written the morning before (on Friday) by the same friends that had been so much in Ruburt’s mind. [...] From the way the letter was written, it seemed as if the friends — call them Peter and Polly — had already started on their journey that (Saturday) morning, and would stop in Elmira on their return much later toward evening. There was no time to answer the letter, of course.

If she hadn’t mentioned her visit to Lib’s, and the paintings, Rob and I never would have realized that anything beyond usual perception was operating in our little discussion. And the discussion was … extremely clear in my mind.

Rob and I can’t be sure whether our discussion was Wednesday or Tuesday night. Wednesday was the night Peg G. visited Lib’s, and saw the paintings.

If our discussion actually happened Tuesday, before Peg’s visit (which was planned ahead of time), then we run into other possibilities than if our discussion was on Wednesday … (as we thought).

[...] Much more effort was involved for her, too. She doesn’t know if it was Seth coming through. [...] I don’t know what it was. [...]

(Note the ambiguity this evening as to just who or what was coming through. First it wasn’t Seth, then it almost was.... [...]

[...] I was getting ready to leave when it came through. [...]

(Briefly: Earlier this afternoon Jane had told me that “someone” was going to speak to and for her as though she were “a child.” [...]

[...] During this dictation she was quite dissociated, she said. Somewhere along the way she realized her voice was deeper, but was not bothered by it. She knew her voice was responsible for the phenomena, yet felt at the same time as though the new voice was independent of her somehow.

(Jane’s voice was by now quite a bit softer. It was obvious that she was tiring. Her pace was also slower.

(Jane was still talking in a voice stronger than usual, though not one any deeper beyond a slight degree. Her pacing was rather slow. Also, her delivery was quite slow and deliberate.)

(I would like to ask Seth if I was using my inner senses during the following episode, without being aware that I was doing so.