“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

However the window(smile, eyes open) you see, was a quite valid fabrication of his own. The projection was a projection. The window through which he ascended was a symbol necessary to him. The actual physical window was behind his head, you see, so he felt impelled to have a window in front of him, in order to get out of the physical house.

(The 56th envelope experiment was held during the session. The object was a pencil drawing I made of Jane this afternoon, without her knowledge. [...] The sketch took but a few minutes because she moved so frequently, and I was much amused at her restlessness; this mirth plays a part in the experimental results. [...]

[...] Jane was out as usual. Her pace was a little better as the session progressed, although her eyes remained closed for most of it.

(It was now time for the 65th Dr. Instream experiment. [...] Jane hesitated for a moment, saying that Seth was waiting for “just the right time” to contact Dr. Instream. [...]

[...] The day was much warmer—about 28—as I went to 330. Debbie Harris was there, wishing us a happy new year. In the emergency room downstairs I’d met Peg Lyon, who also talked about 458—just as I’d started wondering about what the situation there was these days. [...]

(Jane said the cans stood for creature nourishment that we could get when we needed it, and that it was also related to the fund question. My idea had been that the cans—getting to them, digging them out—had represented my searching for negative beliefs so I could dispose of them —but Jane said the idea of nourishment was involved. [...]

(No session was held yesterday, December 31, but here is a summary of the day’s events.

[...] I said what I thought in a mild way, but I could tell that often they didn’t really understand what I was saying—though at times Betts surprised me a little by agreeing with me. [...]

If earlier, however, Ruburt had the erroneous idea that he was going too fast—or would or could—and had to restrain himself and to 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. If our words could not convince him, or his own understanding grasp the truth, then you had the “truth” uttered with all the medical profession’s authority—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], helped impair his hearing to an alarming degree. [...]

[...] [Soon the grass, which is turning green, will need cutting, too.] I became quite concerned over the time element this afternoon when I saw that it was 2:45 before I could get back to the typewriter, when I’d quit work at 11:30 AM. By the time I could go back to work, I was in a half-angry, dejected mood. [...]

(Very long pause at 7:50.) So contrary to its own beliefs, and helpless or not, Ruburt was holding his own. [...]

There was a certain comradeship existing between himself and others, desires and impulses became more immediate, clearer cut, easier to identify. [...]

[...] She was convinced, furthermore, that she was unliked and unlikable. She felt persecuted, sure that people were talking or gossiping about her when her back was turned—because this was precisely what she did. [...] She was tired of the constant battle, never realizing that much of the war was one-sided and unwarranted. [...]

I’d read about such instances, but I have to admit that I thought they were highly imaginative accounts until I found myself guiding Miss C. The point is that she was so frightened of death, she didn’t realize it was all over. Since her physical body was quite dead, she was in her astral body; yet she was acting confused, and her mind was still unclear, as if she still had hardening of the arteries.

[...] For all of that, when she was not sick she had a fine vitality, and a keen, native shrewdness. [...] The worse part was that she really was funny and it was hard as the devil not to laugh at her, even when I knew I shouldn’t. And she knew this, too. So she would try to see how far she could go before I would call her on it and begin a “mini-lecture,” pointing out that her attitude toward other people was largely responsible for her difficulties.

[...] One night I found myself out of my own body in a strange house—strange because while it was extremely old-fashioned, somehow it looked brand-new. Miss C was just going out the door as I arrived. She was very distracted. Suddenly I “knew” that the house was an hallucination she had created, a replica of her childhood home, and I knew that she did not realize she was dead.

(This morning while I was at work, John Bradley stopped by briefly while on a hurried business trip to give Jane some information relating to a prediction of a narcotics scandal that Seth had predicted for Elmira in the 63rd session, of June 17. [...] Seth stated the scandal was due within three months.

(It seems that last night John, while eating in a restaurant with a friend we do not know, was informed by this friend that the Elmira police had taken into custody a man who had been making the rounds of the Elmira pharmacies with a forged prescription for narcotics. This was not in the newspaper.

[...] It was still light out; classical music played on the radio. [...] She began dictating in a voice a bit deeper than usual; her pacing was slow, her eyes dark as usual.)

[...] Jane reported that she was far, far out. [...] My writing hand was getting somewhat weary.

[...] This was on August 2, 1967. Today by telephone Nancy verified Seth, in that her mother is seriously ill at Mayo Clinic; the mother has been ill for some time, but was not, for instance, the last time Jane talked to Nancy, sometime prior to the 358th Session. [...]

For years, literally, it was hammered into Ruburt’s subconscious that he was not worthy of any kind of success, and that he would be punished for his treatment of his mother.

[...] The overly conscientious self was angry (today and tonight), and he projected this anger at you, so that he thought he was simply a bother to you, and of no benefit. [...]

[...] This will be a brief session, and you did well to see that it was held. It was needed.

Ruburt (Jane) was highly creative, and so following the beliefs of his time, he believed that he must watch his creativity most carefully, for he was determined to use it. [...] He was creative, and is. [...]

[...] (Pause.) It was a state when the species became aware of its own thoughts as its own thoughts, and became conscious of the self who thinks. [...] In your terms, it was the product of the feminine intuitions (though, as you know, such intuitions belong to both sexes). [...] Creativity was to follow certain definite roads, so the woman became the villain.

(10:03.) The Catholic Church taught that revelation was dangerous. Intellectual and psychic obedience was much the safer road, and even the saints were slightly suspect. [...]

[...] And yet at the same time he was afraid of exerting power, for fear it would be thought that he was usurping male prerogatives.

[...] Jane’s delivery had become very slow; as slow as the 110th session, which was as slow as any I recall. When I mentioned this Jane was quite surprised. It developed that while dictating she felt she was speaking rapidly. [...] It might be added that during the 110th session, Jane was aware that she was speaking at a slow rate.

(I was still aware of the feeling of enlargement in my right hand. I was careful not to confuse this with any cramping effect from holding a pen for so long. [...] Usually such effects begin to wane as soon as a session ends, but in this instance the sensation was stronger than ever five minutes later. [...]

[...] This was also definite and prolonged. [...] It appeared that the point of transition between the two levels existed somewhere within, or beneath, my body, but I was not aware of it consciously. While I knew the bed lay beneath either arm, note that I was not aware of the bed beneath my lower legs. [...]

[...] Jane was dissociated as usual. [...] As a rule Jane smokes steadily during sessions; even I hadn’t noticed she was going without cigarettes.

There was a slight stroke on the left side several months ago with Miss Price, and Ruburt knew of this in a dream. There was, I believe, a hospital stay, though whether this was connected with the stroke I do not know.

[...] It was mailed or sent, or the object is connected with an item that was mailed or sent.

[...] The city was Baltimore. The arched windows, Miss Healy’s. The date the approximate date the house was built.

(The object for the 83rd envelope experiment was a note Jane wrote to me today; I found it on the table this noon upon returning from work, left there by Jane shortly after 11 AM. [...]

[...] (Pause.) Your President at that time, however, had at his command vast information, so that he was aware of many groups and organizations that did not agree with his policies. He used those as in other circumstances a paranoid might use the sight of a police car to convince himself that he was being pursued by the police, or the FBI or whatever. The President felt threatened — and not only personally threatened, for he felt that the good for which he stood in his own mind was in peril (intently). And again, since the idealized good seemed too remote and difficult to achieve, any means was justified. [...]

The President at the time, and through all of his life before (pause), was at heart a stern, repressed idealist of a rather conventionally religious kind. He believed in an idealized good, while believing most firmly and simultaneously that man was fatally flawed (loudly), filled with evil, more naturally given to bad rather than good intent. He believed in the absolute necessity of power, while convinced at the same time that he did not possess it; and further, he believed that in the most basic terms the individual was powerless to alter the devastating march of evil and corruption that he saw within the country, and in all the other countries of the world. [...]

(The regularly scheduled book session for last night was not held. [...] More often than not he was quite amused as he gave them to her. [...]

[...] Ordinarily a session would have been held, but Ruburt was interested in the movie, and I was interested in Ruburt’s and Joseph’s reactions to it.

If I said, “Look, people, I don’t think Seth is a spirit in the way you mean,” then this was interpreted as an acknowledgement that Seth was only a portion of my personality. Some people thought that I was trying to put Seth down, or deny them the aid of a super-being when at last they thought they’d found one.

While I was trying to define Seth that way and questioning whether or not he was a spirit guide, I was closed off to some extent from his greater reality, which exists in terms of vast imaginative and creative power that is bigger than the world of facts and can’t be contained in it. [...]

But beside this, as Seth was dictating this present book, I also found myself suddenly writing a novel, The Education of Oversoul 7, which was produced more or less automatically. [...] I’d say mentally, “Okay, Seven, let’s have the next chapter,” and there it was as quickly as I could write it down. [...]

While Seth was producing this book, my own life was immeasurably enriched in unforeseen ways. [...]

[...] The old man also stands for Ruburt’s father, as Ruburt thought of him bumming around, frittering away his time and energy, so he was stealing from the pot. [...] Ruburt was not greedy, but curious. [...] The dream said “Do not wait too late to set up the legal mechanism,” and affirmed that Yale was at least a good idea. [...]

Pat was chosen symbolically, yet stands for a definite situation, when you two visited Boston on tour. At that time, Ruburt saw Pat, who is a teacher, and was traveling through belief systems with the greatest of ease, converting to Judaism and then out of it, and so forth. I spoke on television, and you were both appalled at the gulf between what you saw as the idealized message of our work, and the ludicrous (pause) lack of integrity of the environment in which that ideal was expressed. [...]

[...] You felt that the lack of taste, and often of artistic integrity, was so blatant that it blighted the words themselves, marred the message. [...] You felt Ruburt was being too “practical,” and would put up with almost anything, and he felt that you were being too impractical at times.

[...] Jane’s delivery had been good throughout the session, and once again she was relaxed now that it was over. [...]

[...] In that early experience it seemed, surely, that the snake was a living portion of the earth, rising from the bowels of the earth, rising from the hidden source of all earth gods. [...] The snake was then—in your terms, now (underlined)—both a feminine and masculine symbol. [...] Yet also, in its extended form particularly, it was the symbol of the penis. It was important also in that it shed its skin, as man innately knew he shed his own bodies.

[...] I thought the power of suggestion was operating. [...] Out of habit, I’d thought the opposite was the case. John too was surprised; he double-checked his figures to make sure he was right before ordering the weaker lenses. [...]

1. In a simplified account: When I was a youngster my mother took me to see our family optometrist. [...] They weren’t very strong—but once the habit was set I wore glasses without protest for the next 40 years or so. [...] Without being concerned about what I was doing, I began to stop wearing them constantly. [...]

[...] Again, lest there be a sharply inquiring intellect, wondering overmuch about how the words were formed or what motions were necessary, his drawing was in the same way automatic. [...] Therefore, it possessed an almost magical quality, and the “word” was seen as coming directly from God.

(It was 10:02. Jane’s eyes closed, even though she was smoking. [...] Her voice was quiet. Her pace was fairly good in the beginning of the test but eventually slowed considerably. [...]

(The session was held in our back room. [...] Her pace was good for the most part, her voice average.)

[...] Jane was dissociated as usual for a first break, and was somewhat surprised that Seth broke his delivery so soon. [...]

[...] Her pace was a bit slower, and she was smoking as she resumed at 9:20.)

(Again it was a very hot and humid night. By the time session time approached Jane said she was too hot and tired to feel nervous, or anything else. [...]

[...] Jane was dissociated as usual. As in recent sessions during this heat wave, she was bothered not at all by heat and humidity while dictating, while I had to use a cardboard beneath my writing hand to avoid soaking the paper. [...]

(Seth has mentioned this before; this time I was ready with my question when he mentioned this preparation again. But all I got for my pains was a smile from Jane.)

(Jane began dictating in a quiet voice, at a comfortable speed as far as my writing ability was concerned. [...]

[...] The curtains were open, it was still light out, we could hear people talking downstairs and in the hall outside our door. [...] There was a moderate darkening of Jane’s eyes.)

[...] The material was coming through from her own entity. I had kept you up, as it was, long enough.

(“You’re a good kiddo,” was the ultimate compliment that Jane’s very reticent grandfather could pay her. He died in March, 1948, when Jane was 19.)

(This session was unscheduled. [...]

[...] The envelope object was a shopping list I made out with the intention of giving it to Jane earlier today, but did not do so. [...] It was written in a dark pen on white paper torn from a pad the same size, and was folded once before insertion into the double envelopes. The back was blank.

(The list represented numerous small things we had needed for some days, but Jane had been prevented from picking them up because of steady rain while I was at work. The list grew and indeed Jane was to get some items and perform some chores I had forgotten to put on the list. [...] She was to do all the chores tomorrow, Tuesday. [...]

[...] The idea being simply to offer Seth encouragement when he was right, or close, or to ask a question at the moment to develop a bit of data further. She was aware that the approach was different. [...]

[...] I was trying to see what answers along the way would do to help spur Seth on towards more data, when I noted that he was off the track.

“I dreamed that I was in the kitchen of the hill house, in Elmira, crouched down just inside the room’s glass storm door, which was closed. The kitchen’s inside wooden door was wide open, just to my left. [...] Gus was on the other side of the door, on the screened-in back porch, as he should be — only then I saw to my amazement that he was starting to walk through the glass panel in his eagerness to get to the food. [...] I was really surprised. [...]

That is, the dream was giving you an example of one of the main characteristics of what we will call the magical approach. Ruburt did not stress this in his interpretation, which was otherwise excellent.

At a conscious level, of course, neither of you realized, or wanted to realize, the kind of complete repeal and overhaul that was implied by our sessions, and for some years you managed to hold many official views of reality along with the newer concepts, not ready to understand that an entire new way of thinking was involved, a new relationship of the individual with reality. [...]

[...] Then, in order to obtain some physical proof that this was really happening, with my right hand I began to ‘carve’ a squarish hole a few inches across in the glass where Gus’s head had been. [...] The dream glass was about one-quarter-inch thick — double, say, its ‘real’ thickness.

[...] When the session began I was at work in my studio at the back of the apartment; yet, through two closed doors, I heard almost at once when the session began. I was working on the index to these sessions at the time, and the place was quiet.

(Since it was Jane’s first session without my presence, I thought it would be interesting to record some of it. [...] Seth’s voice was easily heard.

(This was an unscheduled session, held for Jane’s Thursday night ESP class, and not planned at all. [...]

(The unique thing here is that this is Jane’s first session at which I was not present. [...]

[...] When the session began I was at work in my studio at the back of the apartment; yet, through two closed doors, I heard almost at once when the session began. I was working on the index to these sessions at the time, and the place was quiet. [...]

(Since it was Jane’s first session without my presence, I thought it would be interesting to record some of it. [...] Seth’s voice was easily heard. [...]

(This was an unscheduled session held for Jane’s Thursday night ESP class. [...]

([Rob]The unique thing here is that this is Jane’s first session at which I was not present. [...]