“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] While Seth was giving his data on the photograph, she said, she was also aware of several images of her own. It was as though she heard what Seth was saying, then conjured up her own separate set of visual images. [...]

(The session was held in our back room and was not interrupted. [...] Her voice was quiet, her pace slow at the beginning, with pauses.)

(“Something to do with a circle” is interesting, in that our motel at York Beach, where this photo was taken, is situated on a circular driveway in back of the beach hotel that fronts on the ocean. In the photo the marsh grass comes out as “dark leaves against white,” and the photo was taken in the afternoon of a bright day. I recall this easily enough because I had to wait until the sun was in the correct position to give a good contrasting result in the black and white photo that I wanted to use for reference.

[...] On the one hand I didn’t want her to feel I was pressuring her for a test every session; on the other hand I wondered whether she would think I was taking it easy on her if I skipped the test. [...]

(Because Monday’s session was so unusual, Jane felt a little hesitant about holding a session tonight. [...] When Jane did begin speaking in trance, her voice was peculiarly gentle in quality—lighter than the usual stronger and heavier Seth voice by a good bit, almost as though she was proceeding somewhat cautiously. [...]

It was a development that could or could not have occurred. [...] The points where this voice was loudest and strong—these points often represented openings through which the development could occur. For various reasons however that method was not used.

There was a point, you see, of interpretation and translation (pause) as Seth interpreted material from me in such a way that Ruburt could then receive it. At our last session, with the greater efficiency and the development on Ruburt’s part (pause), the material was more direct, and the translation at his end automatic and smoothly performed.

(Briefly, Jane’s voice became a little stronger.) While I was the source of the material, Seth as you think of him was at times a silent partner, helping Ruburt make the proper translations while standing aside in a personal manner. [...]

[...] The photo was of our dog, Mischa, now dead. It was taken several years ago or more, on a hot day in the summer; Jane was also with a man whose first initial was W on that day.

(The session this evening was held in our back room and was quite peaceful. [...] Her voice was average, her pace rather slow in the beginning.)

[...] Jane was dissociated as usual for a first delivery. [...] Her pace was fast after a rather slow start.

[...] It was spontaneous, the atmosphere was friendly, and the Gallaghers’ attitude is an excellent one. [...]

[...] Jane was dissociated as usual. She said she could feel Seth pushing concepts at her; it was as though she could assimilate a pint, she said, but Seth wanted her to take a quart. Nevertheless she felt he was taking it easy on her tonight. When she began dictating again her pace was normal. [...]

[...] Each scene was seen as though through a milky screen, but was in color and easily distinct enough to be made out. Each was different, none of them involved people or sound, and none of them reminded me of places we had seen or visited through the day.

[...] Up from her nap, Jane was still sleepy. [...] Willy dozed in a chair; it was a chilly, very windy night.

[...] Through most of the session her delivery was rather slow, yet not as slow for the most part as the last, 60th, session. Although she still chose her words carefully, still there was not the straining and searching attitude so noticeable last time. [...]

Now in your last session Ruburt was given a very primary experience. You asked what it was like to be a personality never formed into physical matter, and I helped him attain some awareness, subjectively, of that condition. He could not go far enough into that concept, but he was briefly between physical existences as you know them.

He told his students that he felt as if he were between worlds, and he was. The answer in this case was not given in words, and at first he did not realize that his experience was as much of an answer as he could be given now.

[...] This was news to me, also, for she had not told me about it. [...] Note that in the last session, my notes contain no reference to Jane’s feeling that she was, however momentarily, between two worlds.)

[...] I was somewhat surprised, thinking the session had ended. Seth was strong and immediate and vital, eyes open. [...]

He was filled with joy as he observed this reality. He knew that in the physical world the puddle was flat, but that he was perceiving another just-as-solid reality; a larger one, in fact, in which that rain creature had its being.

[...] While the experience was exhilarating, it could have turned into a “nightmare” had his conscious mind not clearly understood; had he walked outside, for example, and found himself encountering living creatures rising out of each rainy puddle; and if for the life of him he could not have turned the creatures back. As it was, it was a beneficial experience.

The cat was a male. You and Ruburt originally called it Katherine, however, when it was still a kitten, and before you finally succeeded in coaxing it into your house. [...] The cat knew of the identification but was willing to trade this for several years of additional physical life, in which he also learned to relate to gentleness for the first time.

Ruburt’s mother was very much afraid of cats, particularly black ones. [...] The cat was not a passive receptor, however, and also learned from his encounters with your neighbor downstairs (who also has a cat). Many of Ruburt’s feelings about his mother are buried in Rooney’s grave. Rooney, though, is free of a distrust that he had carried with him this time, having to do with his background in that house across the way, and was grateful for those additional years you gave him.

[...] I learned the trouble was based on my fear that Jane wouldn’t accept, or believe in, the statement. [...] I told her I was floored to learn that she’d let something like that go for so long before trying to learn anything about it’s causes, etc. This of course was a tie-in with the repressions on her part that I’d written about in the statement today.

Part of that was because Ruburt was sensitive to your own negative feelings or fears, and picked these up. [...] The physical condition was also meant as a signal, saying “Look what is happening.” [...]

[...] I was often forced to structure my work along lines that would bring approval. (Pause.) He feared the psychic developments, though they were one of my most creative endeavors, because he was afraid they would bring scorn instead.

[...] I pulled in here after we had passed it; it was at the end of a day of driving, I was tired, and thought of the place. [...]

lord let me remember how it was
when i nudged my skin
against the touch of each new morning
and bounded through
the thick thought-forests
that stretched between dawn and noon,
when like magic my lunch was put before me.
lord let me remember how it was
when i was so new
that i thought i was part of the morning.

(I hadn’t realized four years ago that Jane was speculating about leaving physical reality. [...] She was 47; I was 10 years older. [...]

In this deceptively simple but moving poem about her magical childhood responses to the world she lived in, Jane foreshadows from that viewpoint the innate knowledge she was to express a quarter of a century later in the Seth material. [...]

lord let me remember how it was
when i nuzzled the air in the morning
and thought i could wiggle a distant leaf
just as i moved my own ears and toes.
i thought that i caused rain to fall
just as the tears from my own eyes
wet my cheeks,
and that my thoughts turned into clouds
that circled the top of my head.

[...] Part of this was probably defensive. [...] But the expression of fears was very beneficial, we thought, and surprisingly this was new for both of us.

After the tour, to his way of thinking, there was nothing. He was picked up by the tour and then dropped back. He felt as if Prentice had forgotten him, and that Tam was not interested in his dream book. [...]

(Jane had become very frightened a couple of days ago to realize she was becoming quite apathetic. [...] I was very anxious that we get all the help we could.

If I were telling this to someone else you would think it was excellent advice and wonder why it was not taken to heart. [...]

[...] In those days the Buttses didn’t think in such terms, for one thing; for another, I was absent from the family home in Sayre for much of that time. In 1947, for example, when my mother was 55 years old, I was 28 and living in New York City. [...]

Linden was the one “natural” child of this marriage. Watch how you interpret that, but he was the child least affected by other realities. For that reason, however, and because of your parents’ personalities here, the same amount of attention was not paid him psychically, and he felt that lack.

In another system of reality your father was — in fact, still is — a well-known inventor, who never married but used his mechanically creative abilities to the fullest while avoiding emotional commitment. [...] His love was for machinery, the speed of motorcycles, mixing creativity with metal. [...]

[...] The father that you knew was the probable self, therefore. That probable self, however, dealt with emotional realities that the other avoided, and this was indeed his sole intent.

[...] They kept him writing, cut out distractions while he was learning. They also kept him from what he considered spiritual betrayals: he would not be a television personality, using his great powers of persuasion, until he knew what he was persuading people to do. [...] In his terms he felt alone, in that he felt he was upsetting all known knowledge, and without training working in the unknown. Since I was a part of that unknown, he could only trust me so far.

He decided to let those abilities emerge, yet he was not as sure of them, and did not know how to handle their dimensions. He knew that the stability of his personality was highly important. I emerged as a result of those abilities of his, in his terms; therefore what I said had to be questioned even while I was permitted to speak.

[...] Ruburt was used to his writing abilities, and he was used to subordinating his psychic abilities where they could be safely enough handled through the guise of art.

[...] The psychic abilities are a basic part of his personality—bound to show themselves, as he was determined to express and use them. [...]

[...] It was empty inside. [...] Life was not trusted. [...] There was no purpose in nature except its own mechanical reproduction. [...]

[...] He was young, and following Darwinian and Freudian concepts both, he was therefore vigorous and to be trusted, where Dr. Instream was in his dotage.

[...] It was seen in human terms as inhumane: life without reason, life with no purpose except its own repetition, life in which the individual was dispensable. [...]

Darwin was faced with the proposition of a kind god who was more cruel than any human being, and with supernatural power behind him to boot—so Darwin tried to justify God’s ways to man. [...]

[...] Throughout this extra-long delivery I had thought she was in a deep state, and she now confirmed this; she had but a vague memory of what she had said. “I was out.” [...] “If Seth ever came through undistorted, this was it....”

As long as he acted with relative abandon, as in the early years, relatively unreasoning, then there was no point of conflict. When he tried on the other hand to act in a more reasoning and disciplined manner, when he became convinced of the necessity for discipline and this was in Florida, then he attempted to stifle all spontaneity.

The poetry was not seen as threatening to the disciplined self. Any work of fiction in which his abilities were at all fulfilled would have brought him to this point, and any endeavor such as the psychic work, which was adopted. [...]

The development of abilities, your introduction to me and the sessions, came because both of you realized that a rigidity was settling in upon you. [...] There was a boomerang effect on Ruburt’s part.

Your remark about the dishes was most creative, despite the way the remark was put: “Soon you will be able to stand and do the dishes, and just enjoy the task.” [...] You did remind him of the joy he used to take in that activity, however, and in an important way a conflict was resolved: he enjoys the dishes now, and he can say “Before I know it, I can enjoy it standing up also.”

(No session was held as scheduled last Saturday evening. Jane was extremely upset by her continuing eye condition and the disorienting changes taking place throughout her body; I ended up equally upset after we talked. [...]

[...] It should be added that I’d said that I thought it strange Jane was seemingly more concerned about making it to the dentist’s office than she was about why she had to be there to begin with.)

What you have then was Ruburt’s desire to have his teeth fixed, when it was obvious that he must, and his fear that he could not perform adequately at this time. [...]

It was somewhat overdeveloped in function because of early experience. [...] Because of its distorted ideas it was roused into a frenzy. [...]

For Venice, a small note: I believe AA was indeed a family friend when she was very young in this existence.

You made large attempts to close yourself off from deep emotion, in reaction against your mother’s emotionalism, and largely because you felt emotionalism was false. With her, emotionalism was often an excuse.

[...] She said she had been much farther out than usual, and believed this was due to tonight’s material; she was afraid of hurting me. [...]

The man called Christ was not crucified. In the overall drama however it made little difference what was fact, in your terms, and what was not — for the greater reality transcends facts and creates them. [...] It was given to you. [...] The whole concept of God the Father, as given by Christ, was indeed a “new testament.” The male image of God was used because of the sex orientation of the times, but beyond this the Christ personality said, “…the kingdom of God is within (among) you” (Luke 17:21).

[...] I explained the little I knew about the Gospels to her, and suggested that she attempt to psychically determine whether the “counterfeit” Gospel was that according to Matthew or Luke. In a moment, without trying too hard, Jane said it was Matthew’s. She didn’t know why she came up with that answer and she didn’t try to find out more — nor, she said, did her statement necessarily constitute a reply from or through Seth. It’s generally thought that the Gospel according to Mark was written first.

As I mentioned in Seth Speaks, the Christ entity was too great to be contained in any one man, or for that matter in any one time, so the man you think of as Christ was not crucified (See chapters Twenty-one and Twenty-two of Seth Speaks.)

Nor was the idea of self-sacrifice then involved. [...] But even the myth was distorted. [...]

[...] My position was at ground level. [...] The scene was very faint, so much so that it might almost be called more of an idea than an image. The sky behind the soldier was darkly overcast; I was aware of very little color. I ‘knew’ that the tower I faced marked the southeastern corner of Jerusalem, and I ‘knew’ that the wall itself was an enormous fortification that had surrounded that ancient city sometime during the first half of the first century A.D.

“A sound effect was involved here that was unique for me — doubly so, actually. First, until now my internal perceptions have staged themselves like old silent films; second, the sound itself was quite unusual: The clustered troops on the ground were emitting a low rhythmic chanting or wailing. This was no happy occasion. This sound, rising and falling in such mournful cadences, was unintelligible to me.

“There was something very contradictory about the affair: The soldier-self I saw atop the tower was a Roman — whereas, according to the little I know of those times, such a position should have been occupied by a native Jew, who was perhaps a lookout for the city behind him. [...] I don’t think the ‘me’ I watched was an officer, as had been the case in my third Roman, of October 30.

“Rob: In one of my own ‘past-life’ memories, I was a guard or sentry on a tower like the one in your drawings. Or I was the sentry’s enemy, who came up the steps and attacked him. I was overcome and pushed off the tower, falling backwards in the position your drawing shows. It was night or semi-dark.”

[...] Jane was well dissociated, she said. [...] Bill Gallagher was quite excited. Both he and Peggy verified Seth’s information about the changes in silting on the lake bottom; Jane was highly gratified to learn that Seth was correct. [...]

[...] She seemed to try to supplement her verbal descriptions by outlining objects with her hands, as though she was seeing things somewhat difficult to put into words specifically enough. This applied particularly when she was trying to voice descriptions of the geography of the lake bottom. Her pace was comfortably fast.)

(This session was entirely unplanned. It was also not consciously expected on my part, although checking over my predictions for Friday and today, I discovered that I had unwittingly made several correct notes concerning it. [...]

[...] Seth surprised us by telling us this was quite possible. [...] There was much here, including some generalized locations and descriptions, that is not recorded. [...]

(“What was her first name?”)

(“What was her last name?”)

(“What was your wife’s nationality?”)

[...] All of this was such a novel experience for us that we did not know whether to probe deeper, or continue. [...]

“My heavyset friend was filled with the thrill of knowing that now words would spread faster. [...] This man had several apprentices, and he was a real artisan, putting ideas across in the form of movable type. I know that Gutenberg is credited with this invention, and probably rightly so; but I also feel this as one of those discoveries that appeared in several places at once, and that my beefy fellow’s shop was in the general vicinity of Gutenberg’s — in Germany? [...] This idea was ‘shared’ in many places at once, then.⁶

(Jane’s ESP class for Tuesday evening, February 25, took place the day after the 739th session was held, and was her last one before we began preparing for our move to the hill house. Sue Watkins was present. [...]

[...] It’s believed that Johann Gutenberg (1400?–1468) was experimenting with movable metal type in Strasbourg, Germany, before 1448 — but there’s also possible evidence of printing from such type in Holland by 1430, for instance. (And typography itself was known, but not much used, in China and Korea in the 11th century.) In about 1448 Gutenberg became a citizen of Mainz, Germany, where he continued his work. By then, of course, the news about printing was spreading throughout Europe.

[...] Since at the time I was working as a typesetter,² I figured my impression had derived from that. [...]