“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] “I kept waiting there, as though I was at the edge of something, and trying to get over it into something new. As though I was free-sailing…. My God, it was short enough,” she exclaimed as she looked at the clock for the first time. [...] Jane’s sense of time had been elongated while she spoke for Seth: “I feel like I was really far … like you were getting more than you could translate, like you were right on the edge of something….”

[...] The shade of the closest lamp was fatter and taller than its companion’s, but this didn’t seem to matter: I soon realized that both lights were supernally bright—so strong, indeed, that although I was very tempted to turn my head to look straight at them, I refrained because I wasn’t sure I could stand facing them. [...] I knew that I wasn’t dreaming, that the experience was most unusual. I also knew that by an act of will I could ‘swing’ the lights around in front of me if I wanted to, and I tried enough of this to verify that it was possible: As they moved the lights began to grow even more powerful—enough to quickly convince me that I didn’t want to confront their glare full blast, even with the shades.

[...] By session time I was caught. [...] I could always make another attempt tomorrow morning, of course, but for some reason I was rebelling at admitting my failure today.

[...] Ruburt was correct, however, in seeing the connection between the lampshades and the Nazi experiments (in World War II) with human skin. [...] The connection was beneath, however, and also represented your feeling that even those people tortured to death did live again. [...]

[...] Last night, we had reminders that a natural rhythmic cycle was completing itself six months later: As we retired I thought I heard the barking of geese migrating north, although Jane didn’t. I woke up around four a.m., though, and heard a flight clearly in the silent hour. Then early this morning as I was painting in my studio, that same cadence came sounding down through a fine rain.

[...] I was working on this book when I heard the sound of another flight, intermixed with traffic noise. [...] It was still raining lightly. [...]

[...] To some extent this was quite natural, for the new species developed in order to change the nature of its consciousness, to follow a reality in which instinct was no longer “blindly” followed, and to individualize in strong personal focus corporeal experience that had previously taken a different pattern.

(This was one of those times when she was consciously aware that several channels of information were available from Seth. [...]

[...] My friend, Debbie Harris, found the original in notebook #39 when she was copying it for Yale University Library. I’d evidently laid the notes aside to type the next day because I was so busy, then forgot to type them. [...]

(4:55 p.m. “I should tell you,” Jane said as I lit a smoke for her, “but as soon as that program was over, I knew he was going to mention the Abominable Snowman. [...]

[...] Today Jane and I sort of disagreed [I think] on what Seth was saying. She seems to think the actual episode of Father Darren chasing her around the bed when she was in that hotel room with him as a teen-ager is changed, whereas I thought Seth meant that the original event remained, but that her psychological understanding of what had transpired changed a good deal. [...]

(How strange — here I am, typing another session from my notes, when I thought that part of my life was over — that I’d never have another session to type. [...]

(Today was even warmer than it has been — an incredible 45 degrees when I backed the car out of the garage. Wouldn’t you know it — the spring mechanism that governs the travel of the garage door broke as I was lowering the door, so that I couldn’t close it all the way. So when I got to 330 one of my first acts was to call Overhead Door and ask them to have someone check the garage door this afternoon, if possible. [...]

(And when I got home tonight, my feeling of anticipation was borne out: there was a communication from Maude Cardwell. [...]

[...] At times the feeling was rather strong.

[...] My questions had to do with the consciousness that must reside within, or make up, radiation, and why that type of consciousness was so virulent that we humans couldn’t tolerate it. [...]

(Jane’s Seth voice was good, as it had been yesterday. The heater in 330 was working again, for some mysterious reason, since Jane said no one had been in to check it today, and yesterday the fellow hadn’t been able to get it going. The window was open a good foot, but the room was still warm.)

[...] The food was delicious. [...] The strawberry cake was impossibly rich and sweet, though.

[...] It was gone by the time I went to bed, but taught me that sometimes the old ideas and beliefs die hard. [...]

(When I walked into 330 Jane was singing to herself in a low voice. [...]

[...] Seth was right: I was going too slow—not too fast, as I had feared. I had calmed myself down too far, disciplined myself overmuch, until my only hope was to change my course at once.

[...] If I’d felt I was suffering a heart attack, for example, I knew I would rush to the hospital, but this was a chronic condition. [...]

Doctors had terrified me as a child, when my mother was already bedridden with arthritis, and when I was diagnosed as having an overactive thyroid gland—an affliction that could lead, so my mother told me, to insanity and death. [...]

[...] The company that published my books, Prentice-Hall, was changing its structure and policy. My longtime friend and editor there, Tam Mossman, was considering leaving to work for another publishing firm. [...]

(Before the session I mentioned the question I kept in mind for Seth, concerning what the Sinful Self may have learned since this last series of sessions was started. I said it was essential that we communicate to that personification [named by Seth for convenience’s sake only] that its performance was quite destructive to Jane, and that it must release its hold. I wanted to know the Sinful Self’s attitudes toward the fact that it had rendered Jane literally helpless as far as her survival was concerned; she couldn’t take care of herself physically without the aid of others, I said, so this obviously implied that the Sinful Self was creating its own demise also. [...]

[...] The temperature was still high at session time; even hotter weather was predicted for tomorrow. [...]

[...] The incident upset Jane, signifying as it did people’s urges to ask her all kinds of questions for all kinds of psychic help—taking it for granted that she was able and willing to offer that help. [...] Neither girl was dead, by the way. [...]

[...] She’d been correct in this case also, saying the person was not dead; he returned within the time she specified, also, namely one dating several months after his disappearance. She was eventually brought up to date on the situation by letter.

(Jane was so relaxed by session time, so “out of it,” that she didn’t think she could manage a session. [...] As I sat on the couch Billy, who is much improved now, curled himself up half in my lap, so that writing as Seth spoke was more than a little difficult. Yet when Jane went into trance her delivery as Seth was fast and steady:)

(“Man was created by God, so that nature only had meaning in relationship to man—man was dominant. [...] The universe wasn’t created by God, and man and nature alike had no meaning, so that thematically man went from being the center of the universe, a special creature, created by God, to a meaningless conglomeration of atoms and molecules, and a meaningless universe, and that philosophical drop was shattering to man. [...]

[...] Another idea—“It’s no big deal”—was that for centuries man thought the universe was created for man, and everything else revolved around man.

(By now, speaking, Jane had fallen into a mode of dictating to me as I wrote; this was different than her simply telling me something in ordinary terms. It wasn’t Seth speaking, but her own delivery was quite precise and unhesitating, and she paused just as Seth did to give me time to write down her words. [...]

(This evening’s session was held in our small back room, and was very peaceful and quiet. [...] Her voice was quiet and she used pauses for the first time in quite a few sessions.)

(The word fragment was first used in the 4th session, Volume 1, page 22, by Frank Watts. Actually the Frank Watts personality was in the process of being superseded by Seth then, and on the next page Seth announced his presence by name. This was on December 8,1963. [...]

[...] Jane was dissociated as usual. [...] He was concerned mainly with the general material. She said she sensed a slight irritation on Seth’s part when I asked if anybody else had listened to the tape with Dr. Instream; it was as though Seth could get the information to answer the question, but didn’t feel inclined to so exert himself.

[...] One was clairvoyant, two were telepathic. [...]

Ruburt was in such a state during his experience last evening. It was indeed a healing one, when he was dealing with the plasticity of events, and bringing those he wanted into better focus, by consciously drawing upon his own larger creative abilities. [...]

(“During Monday’s session I was going to ask about that dream he had—on Monday afternoon, I think. [...]

[...] Overall, that dream, and today’s, both represented deep feelings that challenges could be met successfully, even in an adventurous fashion—that he was safe. [...]

He saw his mother, but the image was a projected one. It was a feared image of himself, wrapped too tightly in the bedding, which represented the restraints of old beliefs. [...] Yet when he asked his mother, “Can you see?” it was obvious that she could.

[...] Jane’s delivery was strong and steady through the session—much more so than usual. [...] She took this to mean she was thinking of dying, and she didn’t want to do this, or leave the cats. [...]

[...] The earlier portions of the dream did, however, represent fears that Ruburt was, say, dying of suffocation—not physical suffocation, but from being bound too tightly.

(The 58th envelope experiment was held this evening. The object was a faded color Polaroid photograph. The picture was taken by Don Wilbur on April 4,1966, as noted on the back. [...] The photo is of a decorative garden cat, bearing a shining glass glaze, and was made by Marilyn.

[...] She had seen Don hand me the envelope on April 4, but since none of us had ever mentioned it since then I was hoping she had forgotten about it. [...]

[...] The three have heard Seth speak before on a few informal occasions; this was their first regular session. [...]

(It was a hot, muggy night, and windows were open. [...]

(Jerry was convinced by my actions in the argument sequence that I was Billie or controlled by her at that time. [...] She was certain it was Billie. [...]

[...] Ruburt’s reaction to stressful situations was a repressive one: he did indeed often feel in a steady state of some alarm. Because of other beliefs it seemed that it was not safe to relax. [...] It seemed to offer a dependable framework to keep him from going too far in one direction or the other (intently), and was used as a cushion against the other uncertainties in your lives. [...]

[...] “I thought there was something involving you toward the end that I didn’t get,” Jane said. [...] She was also genuinely surprised at the time, it being much later than she thought it was: “I can’t get over it.”)

[...] So have I. She was much affected by my note on page 156 of last night’s session, just as I was while writing it. [...]

[...] She did have an unclear image while trying for the library, and discovered it was a bit scary. [...]

(Today I’d asked her if she come up with any insights on her own as to why she was still sleeping so much in her chair, even after being home from the hospital for six months. [...] I was afraid resistance was still involved. [...]

[...] She’d mentioned a session earlier in the day, and so had I. At the same time she’d slept in her chair most of the day, and was doing so again at the card table, when I finally got out there at about 7:55. She was partially disoriented when I called her: “I thought I’d already had it,” she exclaimed. [...]

[...] Jane was quiet for some time after the session. For the first time in a long while, I’d say, her delivery and manner was much more like the Seth of old —firm and amused and emphatic in turn, and free of tremor, with pauses as usual. [...]

(I was amused during the visit to learn that “two little old ladies, one who’s interested in your stuff and one who’s a skeptic,” waited in the car in the driveway while Michaellen and I talked under the porch light. [...] Every so often whoever was driving the car would start it up so the heater would go on. [...]

[...] Ruburt’s “overly conscientious self” was indeed built up in response to his belief that he was, to begin with, overly enthusiastic, overly impulsive, overly spontaneous. He was naturally expressive and open with people. He was creatively gifted—but an overly impulsive child does not care for an invalid mother, conscientiously, for 21 years.

More than this, the Freudian concepts said more or less that each person, regardless of their individuality, was driven by sexual energies of great force. There was in such a system no room, literally, for individual differences, but a norm set so that you must behave thus and so.

[...] He felt he was too spontaneous, again, too impulsive—but then in that belief system he worried if his sexual needs could not be properly squashed, supposing someone else aroused them, and he “fell in love” with someone else as quickly as he had fallen in love with you. Or worse—supposing your repressed sexuality was repressed because of your joint work, and supposing you fell in love with someone else, and became sexually aroused for another?

[...] Yet, I added, the fact that the two medical people had discovered Seth was, in a small way, a sign that the material had at least managed some sort of transcendent movement. [...]

[...] Actually, I was amazed. [...] Indeed she was. I told her her reading was easily the best she’s done since coming into the hospital—and even before, at the house, though she questioned the house part of my enthusiastic statement. [...]

[...] Once again she gave me the feeling that she—her body—was practicing control and coordination. This was all a good workout in itself. [...]

[...] “What was I doing, anyway? That was one of the wildest things I’ve done yet....” [...]

(It was easy to turn Jane on her back after I got to 330 at 1:05, and she ate an excellent lunch. [...]

[...] This was an interruption of the material on Chapter Six of Seth’s book, but as long as a break had occurred I suggested Seth say something about Jane’s cold. [...] I was puzzled that it was lingering so long.)

[...] At one other time such a situation was set up. The cold’s duration was far briefer, through very intense, but his overall condition was better then.

When he began clamping down on physical spontaneity, tensing of the head, neck and jaw areas was involved, leading to a sinus condition. [...]

[...] We were in Rochester October 6—8, 1972.) In Ruburt’s past a cold was the one quite acceptable symptom in childhood of escape, for example.

[...] The car was parked at the side of the road. It was a bright sunny day, and I was wearing a cap and sports clothing. I was on the left side of the car, pointing toward the front. This was interrupted by Jane calling me, since I had set a time limit. [...]

[...] There was no sound, the color was subdued. The sighting was over before I realized it.

(Jane was up from her nap by 8:30 PM. At 8:55 she said she was not as nervous as usual before a session. [...]

(It might be added here that John Bradley, our drug-salesman friend from Williamsport, PA, who has been a witness several times now and has read some of the material, visited us on Tuesday, May 5, the day before this session was held. He told us again about a lawyer friend of his in Williamsport, who wanted to witness a session, and indeed was willing to make the long drive [about 200 miles round trip] solely for this purpose. [...]

(I was greatly pleased that Seth answered one of my two questions, by saying that Jane did not have arthritis. [...] I can already see how her healing is going to influence future books, or notes I may write—for I’ll have to explain how the diagnosis of arthritis came about in the medical profession, how erroneous it was, and why we went along with it for so long, while all the time knowing, or at least feeling, that it wasn’t so, that there was more involved than Jane having “an incurable disease.” [...]

(Then another interesting little event—another sign—took place as I was preparing to leave room 330 tonight at 7:00 PM. [...] I was delighted, and so was she. [...]

[...] When I got there at 1:10 this noon a new nurse—a “floater”—was hooking Jane up to her antibiotic, Kefzol. [...]

His decision not to get weighed (some months ago) was a good one, and at the time it gave him some breathing space, so to speak, which he did use to advantage. [...]