“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane began dictation on time, in a voice that was pitched just a little lower than usual. Her delivery was faster than last session’s especially slow manner. Her pacing was regular, her eyes dark, and again she was without her glasses.)

(Shortly before the session was due I mentioned that I hoped Seth would clear up the discrepancy concerning the date of his birth. It was given as 1486 in the last session. [...]

[...] Jane was dissociated as usual. [...] Then she announced that Seth was gone.

[...] I wanted to see what it was. [...] I saw that the item was a hamburger; then it faded. [...]

(No session was held last Monday night because Jane was so relaxed, just as she was now. [...] Jane had a “scary” dream episode last night, one that was quite unpleasant, she said, and involved her seeing herself in different time frames and three different programs or movies on TV at the same time. [...]

You have been taught for centuries in one way or another that repression, generally speaking, now, was all in all a natural, good, social and moral requirement, that expression was dangerous and must be harnessed and channeled because it was believed so thoroughly that man’s natural capacities led him toward destructive rather than positive behavior. [...]

Energy was feared, expression suspicious unless it was directed and tempered in conventional fashions. [...] If you did not believe that energy was more naturally dangerous than beneficial, you would not have any difficulties at all concerning issues like nuclear bombs.

[...] It was 9:00 by the time I got settled—and she still didn’t “feel him around”—meaning Seth, of course. She added that she was having the session because she supposed she ought to.

[...] Jane was dissociated, she said, but not to much of a degree. [...] It was the first time she could remember that any outside influences had made themselves felt while she was dictating.

[...] Jane was not nervous before the session. [...] Her pacing was also slow, her eyes dark as usual.)

(It might be added that this evening it had rained, and now the night was very hot and humid. [...] Her delivery was by now very slow.)

[...] Jane was dissociated to some degree. [...] She had been reading that exterior stimuli should be excluded during such sessions as we conduct, and supposed Seth was right in stating that she may have allowed herself to be bothered. [...]

[...] [The contract was countersigned on March 22.] “Don’t worry,” I said to Jane in the hospital, “I know who’s going to do the rest of the work on the book....” [...] Therefore, actually producing the physical work for the publisher was going to be up to me, and I was anxious to begin work on this once we’ve established some sort of viable daily routine revolving around Jane’s nursing care, sleeping schedule, medication, etc.

(The contradictory thing was, as I’d told her the other day, that I didn’t think we were going to get anywhere in solving our dilemmas until we tapped into the session routine again. [...] Yet each time I wanted to try something, Jane was having difficulty focusing. Just as I was about to give up for this evening, Jane came awake again and said rather firmly, “I’ve passed a certain point, Bob, and now I can do it....” [...]

(Pause at 9:10.) To such a degree, of course, the affair was, then, therapeutic. (Pause.) Ruburt is now far more willing to make certain changes in his life than he was earlier, and he sees himself more as one of a living congregation of creatures—less isolated than before, stripped down from the superperfect model, and therefore no more under the compulsion to live up to such a psychological bondage (all with some emphasis). [...] He found a mixed world—one hardly black or white, one with some considerable give-and-take, in which under even the most regrettable of circumstances there was (underlined) room for some action, for some improvement, for some decision, for some creative response. [...]

[...] I was eager to get Jane started on a program of self-therapy through the Seth material in order to help her counter—or at least supplement—the standard rigid medical framework we’ve been encountering for the last month, or since she went into the hospital on February 26, 1982. [She was discharged on March 28.]

In those early times, then, consciousness was more mobile. Identity was more democratic. In a strange fashion this does not mean that individuality was weaker. Instead it was strong enough to accept within its confines many divergent kinds of experience. A person, then, looking out into the world of trees, waters and rock, wildlife and vegetation, literally felt that he or she was looking at the larger, materialized, subjective areas of personal selfhood.

To explore that exterior world was to explore the inner one. Such a person, however, walking through the forest, also felt that he or she was also a portion of the inner life of each rock or tree, materialized. Yet there was no contradiction of identities.

[...] There was a constant interaction. It is easy to say to you that such people could identify, say, with the trees, but an entirely different thing to try to explain what it would be like for a mother to become so a part of the tree underneath which her children played that she could keep track of them from the tree’s viewpoint, though she was herself far away.

[...] This love was biologically ingrained in him, and is even now biologically pertinent.

(This session was unscheduled. [...] It had caught our fancy to some degree and was possibly within our ability to buy, if we could take the word of friends of ours. [...] The house offered privacy but seemed to raise as many questions as it answered, one of them being that it was situated on a hillside and was accessible only by a very steep dirt road that was not maintained by either state or county.

[...] Her voice was somewhat husky, and remained so. [...] She paced as usual; her eyes did not display the darkening so usual at night, yet there was a change in them.)

[...] We had not entertained any though of buying it, however, since we had heard the price was high previously, and did not care for the location. Seth was very serious as he relayed the above information through Jane.)

[...] Jane was dissociated as usual. [...] The house had, we had been told, about an acre of land, although it was all on the steep side of a hill. [...]

[...] The unusual thing achieved this time was that my left heel came to feel that there was nothing beneath it, as though it hung off the edge of the bed. The sensation had good duration and was unmistakable. I verified that my foot actually was on the bed by exerting pressure. [...]

[...] The painting was rather abstract, but hinted at a Middle East background, and the head was in a turban of sorts.

[...] Jane was again well dissociated. My writing hand was tiring, otherwise I would not have taken the break. [...]

[...] Jane was dissociated as usual. [...] My writing hand was tired.

[...] The raise was meant to be used as an aid. Now this does not mean that your landlady knew this, but in a way she did, for all of your intentions were subconsciously taken into consideration when such a decision was made.

(Note: This session was held on June 2. On June 5 we heard that Leonard was going to contact a real estate agent about buying a house.

The only person who was more or less entirely neutral in the whole affair was the woman above, who had little to do with any decision. [...]

[...] Jane’s trance was, she said, very good. She had been “far-out” again, with little or no memory of what was said. [...]

In a way mental organization itself was different—psychic priorities, if you prefer. [...] The earth was felt to be a more lively participator, it was personified. [...]

Reading was generally accepted. Books were numerous, but reading was done in the daytime. Technology was considered a plaything. [...]

[...] There have been civilizations devoted mainly to art, in which all other endeavors were considered subsidiary, and the quality of workmanship was everything, no matter what the product. Mass production was inconceivable, because the originality of each piece of art, or furniture, or bowl, held its value in that manner, and the idea of producing a copy of anything would have been considered ludicrous, or considered an act without reason.

[...] At the same time she was experiencing rather profound physical changes in both her legs and feet, as she demonstrated for me. [...]

[...] when you were working particularly at Artistic, you could not say he was out gadding around and not using his abilities. There he was in his chair. [...]

The car lost, was lost—no coincidence any more than your behavior during the flood. [...] He felt that the last one was purchased by you in order to reach your parents, begrudgingly, that you would not have purchased a “new one” for him for example.

Lighting his own cigarette in public was the one wild gesture of independence he allowed himself because you made such a point of lighting it for him. He was saying “In big things where I need help you often refuse to help, and your help is a gesture as when you light my cigarette, when I can do that myself.” [...]

[...] He was still looking for signs that you meant the change—do you follow me?

(The above isn’t an accurate definition of what the insight was about, and I do think it was a valid one; it may be as good as I could get it in discrete words, I told Jane after I’d read it to her. I was after an understanding on various levels of the fact that Jane had created something that certainly assumed equal billing with her other creative work—that the personality may have been quite aware that this would happen, and was willing in some sort of terms for the situation to exist for a number of years.

Unfortunately, the system itself began to impede the very abilities it was meant to protect. [...] The body kept insisting that it was being put upon most severely. [...]

[...] Her stress relieved itself to some degree today as the hours passed, although she was still quite uncomfortable, still unable to walk as much as she had been doing recently. [...]

[...] My words made the insight sound more prosaic than it really was, I’m afraid. [...]

(The object for the 72nd envelope experiment was an empty envelope, as shown. [...] The object was a standard white business envelope, printed and typed in black. The back was blank. [...]

[...] The empty envelope used as object was mailed to me last May 26,1966, by an old friend, Wendell Crowley, and contained a letter detailing a reunion of a group of friends, all artists, that Wendell and I worked with in 1941-43. The letter was not in the envelope but was kept separate by me for reference after the session. [...]

[...] Wendell’s letter of May 26 was in answer to a letter I wrote him last February. I do not have a copy of my letter, but am sure it was written in February because Wendell discusses my references to snow and poor weather. Our weather last winter was quite peculiar—we had no snow at all until the massive three-day storm of February 1, one of the worst in local history. [...]

[...] At first it had little meaning for her, and as is often the case she said the data obtained pertaining to it was incorrect. True, the data was not as specific as it has often been, but it did contain a number of valid points. [...]

[...] I was a baby in my hometown, Saratoga Springs, N.Y. The time was about 1931 to start with. Everything was misty, gray, without color. [...] Biologically I wasn’t keyed into it in my ‘now’, I was in it and not in it, between focused realities … traveling in or through these fluctuations of consciousness Seth talked about in the last session. [...] Was I trying to develop one of those here in my own physical reality? But this was definitely a waking event, taking place just before my nap. [...]

(I discussed with Jane the questions I’d thought of when Seth had commented, above, on “… how limiting previous concepts of psychology have been.”: As a discipline, why was psychology so narrowly developed? Why hadn’t it continued expanding until it encompassed ideas like those Jane was delivering tonight, for instance? Her work was unique in that it was coming through her individual personality, I added — yet, why wasn’t the theory of probabilities, or its equivalent, say, common knowledge, or at least considered, in psychology today? [...]

[...] Once again, as she had before the 684th session and on other occasions, she said that now “something was different” in the sessions: For this book she had to “get a certain clear focus …”)

[...] Making a joke, I asked Jane what was coming up next in the session. [...]

[...] Her story however was printed on Monday, April 18, which means she had to see Bill sometime Monday morning. This was possible because Bill Macdonnel, as a teacher, was still on Easter vacation. [...]

(Jane was still not feeling tiptop, but thought she would rather have the session than miss it. It was held in our front room. [...]

[...] She has been doing very well on her book on dreams recently; this afternoon she remarked that it was going so well that she wondered where the material was coming from. [...]

[...] See the summary of the unscheduled 247th session, which was held at the home of our landlady, Marian Spaziani. [...] We considered that Jane was reacting to suggestion here, but were rather surprised since Jane knows how to guard against negative suggestion as a rule.

(I was beginning to get glimmerings of a number of questions that, as far as I knew, I hadn’t been stewing about, at least consciously. I was surprised. “I was wondering if our going with the fund idea would knock us into another probability,” I said to Seth—and already I knew the answer, since it wasn’t a very bright question.)

(I thought the dream was another very positive one, and meant that Jane and I have left behind the old dead beliefs represented by Del. The fact that we were there in the summertime was also a good sign. [...]

[...] It was soon time to turn Jane and massage her with Oil of Olay. [...] Our early evening hour passed as usual until I was getting ready to put on my jacket to leave. [...]

No specific data, per se, was received—only the feeling of need—and to that those people responded. They responded, then, to your feeling whether or not the feeling was justified in a basic way. [...]

To that extent it was consistent. It was not driven however by intent. [...] In deeper terms however it was a creature of default, of frustration, and lack-of. [...]

(The first part of this session, being personal, was not used in the Appendix for Seth’s book. [...] The book was mailed to Prentice-Hall on November 15, after extensive rewriting of the notes, additional proofreading, etc. [...]

(Since August, when this session was held, it seems that little if anything has developed re Jane’s helper. The ideas seem to be very good ones, and I remember that when the session was held we had high hopes. [...]

[...] The environment change has been of great benefit, but also because he was ready. [...]

(The day wasn’t bad — 25 degrees as I headed for room 330 — but a snowstorm was predicted for the afternoon. Jane was already on her back; her left shoulder had been bothering her. It was obvious that she was blue. [...]

[...] I asked Jane why she hadn’t at once asked Shawn to save it, but when she remembered to some ten minutes later, it was too late; Shawn had cleaned up the mess and thrown it all out. [...] Maybe I was tired.

(Then as I was fixing the tray for lunch, Peggy Gallagher, our friend who is a reporter for the Elmira Star-Gazette, visited and stayed through most of the meal. [...]

[...] She was interrupted by Carla and Shawn to check her vitals — temperature 99 — and finished the session ten minutes later.

(Jane called back to me that she was alright during a break, and this & my waking up served to end the session. Jane said she felt it was a good session, an unusual occasion to get some new ideas, so she went along with Seth & his entity. She also knew the whole session was being recorded.)

[...] and the comprehension that exists within each cell, the knowledge that each cell has, the desire for organization was given by us. The entire webwork was initiated by us. [...]

[...] But the terms are meaningless to me, for he is what I was in your terms.

(The session is included in the regular series because of the voice effects; the fact that both Seth & his entity spoke; some new ideas from both entities; and because no regular session was held the next day, Wednesday, July 16.

(Jane was sunning herself in the backyard when the mail arrived at about 2:40 PM, and from her position could not see the mailman come or go. [...] She was in the company of two young women, one of whom lives in the apartment beneath us.

(It wasn’t until I was typing up these notes at 9 PM on the same day, that Jane realized she could have been in at least a light trance while giving the material; at first she thought she had not been, but then realized she retained only a hazy idea of the material’s content—just that it was optimistic. [...]

[...] Their card was written and mailed on June 27, Thursday, giving someone there three days to read the script, perhaps make some sort of evaluation, etc. Note that their response gave both of us the feeling that something unusual was involved. [...]

(I was painting in my studio, took a break, and went down to our front mailbox and picked up the mail. [...]

(Jane was full of restless, positive energy this afternoon and evening. I viewed it as a helpful expression, and wondered if it was connected with the letter she had received from Harry Edwards, in England, last Friday, August 9. In the letter Edwards told of a program he had begun, to send healing energy to Jane.

(There was no response from Seth to this. Upon reflection, and without checking records, I believe Miss Lennon could have been my teacher in junior high school, or perhaps when I was a freshman.)

(At 8:55 PM Jane had the impression of the name, Alice Prentice, as that of the deceased high-school classmate of mine, who was now dead, that I had helped astrally. [...]

Now it is important that you realize that we have used analogies rather freely in our last two sessions, for there was no other way to give you any clear concept of the material I wished to present.