“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] Royalties, prime-time TV series, movies, TV specials—there was no area in which the family wasn’t making incredible amounts of money. [...] I was of course especially angry that they were world renowned while I thought Jane’s great abilities were largely unappreciated and ill paid for by Prentice, Bantam, etc. The recent sale of Oversoul Seven to an English publishing house for an unbelievable $100, and Prentice’s recent notice to us of a possible sale of Seth Speaks for translation and publishing by a German house for only $300 bothered me greatly; I just couldn’t believe that so little money was available in Europe, no matter what Prentice told us. [...]

(My discussion upset Jane, of course, as she made ready for tonight’s session, and I was left feeling angry and taken advantage of. I also felt that Jane was largely unconcerned by the foreign rights questions, and to me this was rather inconceivable, if such a word can be so qualified.

[...] Ruburt was warm, curious, and solitary. He did not reinforce the director’s sense of his own importance, and the man was used to that. [...]

[...] I thought the material was excellent in all respects. [...] I thought part of the material was hilarious, about our attitudes toward the world. [...]

(Last Thursday afternoon as I lay down for my customary nap before supper, I had an experience that was new for me: I’ve been meaning to write it up, so this place will serve as a record. [...] I was very comfortably ensconced on our couch. [...] The sensation was brief but unmistakable, and very enjoyable. [...]

Each muscle, ligament, and joint was to some extent affected, drawn too tightly. [...] The eyes did not roll easily, but since no attempt was made to roll them, the restriction was not noticed, except when Ruburt tried to roll his eyes when they were closed, for an exercise once or twice.

[...] But I still thought it very strange for the eyes to cause problems if the body was in the process of healing itself, as Seth has so often said recently is the case. [...] I was ready to admit that the body could repair itself in ways that might be mysterious to us, but at the same time I certainly wanted additional reassurances from Seth that we were doing the right thing in going along with his information. [...]

[...] Ruburt had some habits he was only vaguely aware of. [...] This was because the knees hurt. [...]

[...] He could see the change that came over me while I was speaking for Seth, and Seth inspires confidence. [...] Almost from the beginning he was an objectified personality to Rob; a visitor regardless of the unconventional situation; someone in whose ideas Rob was tremendously interested. On the other hand, I only knew what had been said when the trance (or the fun) was over. It was a terrific change for me to suddenly have to rely on someone else — even Rob — to tell me what “I” had been saying for a period of two or three hours.

“I really felt that someone else was here, that Seth was looking out the window,” Rob said, when the session was over. “It was … nostalgic.” [...]

If you recall, part of your mind was conscious in usual terms. You were capable of normal conversation; another part of your psyche was completely dissociated and waiting for your command. [...]

We didn’t realize it at the time, but in these early sessions, Seth was gently leading us down the “garden path” — it became more difficult to think of the world in the usual terms, for example. Even though I had come to no conclusions as to what Seth was or wasn’t, the Seth material itself fascinated me. [...]

[...] She feels that this evening’s session was good because of her experience with past sessions. [...] At times she was not conscious of being in her body; yet neither was she conscious of being anyplace else.

[...] Her voice was quiet and clear throughout the session. Her rate of delivery was again quite slow; some of her pauses were long. [...]

[...] Jane reported she was as well dissociated as she has ever been. She used to be afraid that when she was “way out” she would be empty, but she has discovered the state is not like that at all.

(Indeed, Jane said, although she now thinks she was aware of this grasping of concepts in the last session, she did not mention it because her conscious awareness of it was so fleeting. [...]

(But with a new insight growing out of this month’s series of private sessions, I explained, I now felt that one could more directly get at the heart of one’s challenges, instead of trying to cajole the body into behaving differently—after all, the body’s condition was the result of certain ways of thinking, not the cause of the trouble. In addition, it was obvious that the body hadn’t responded to those habitual suggestions over the years, so something else was needed. [...] One might better address the fears of being the public person, for example, rather than trying to futilely patch up a body that was only faithfully following mirroring habits of deep and long standing.

(As we began to reread Monday’s session this morning, Jane said something that triggered a reaction on my part that I felt was based on material Seth gave in that session: “I tell my body every day that I trust it, that it can bear my weight when I go to the john, for example,” or words closely to that effect. Suddenly it came to me that she had it backwards—that her body didn’t need any additional trust, that it was perfectly willing to do her bidding at any time, including healing itself. What she should be stressing, I said, was that she trusted her spontaneous self—then the body would automatically react to the release of tension, to her trust in that spontaneous self. [...]

[...] And I learned during the day that our talk had upset her considerably, even though I’d told her I felt that there was “a lot of hope” in the ideas expressed in our discussion. [...] Yet I felt that I was on to something good, and asked Jane pretty definitely to see that Seth discussed the subject tonight. [...]

[...] At the same time she talked about how upset she was at sleeping during the day; and added to her upset now was the question of what suggestions to use. [...]

[...] He was literally terrified. [...] But he is doing so, and energy is being released and is available to him, that was not available earlier.

[...] Because of the physical connotations Ruburt’s age was a fairly significant circumstance as far as the beginning (underlined) of his development was concerned. [...]

[...] Ruburt was strongly attracted to your new rug because of the contrast, this in itself allows steady and harmonious expression of his own personality.

[...] First of all you deeply feared that in rearranging her house she was merely playing with surface arrangements, and would not touch the deeper dilemmas of the family.

The other [Saturday] evening while he was in bed Ruburt had a somewhat surprising experience. He was not dreaming. His body was asleep but his consciousness was drifting. [...] For an instant he was tempted to interpret the power as anger, for in your world when someone is shouting they are usually angry. He realized, however, that something else was involved. [...] In these instances, however, he was the channel through which my voice came. [...]

6. About Seth’s reference to the myths connected with his name: Set, or Seth, was an Egyptian god of evil (with an animal’s head) whose complicated origins could, it’s thought, reach back in antiquity to at least 7500 B.C. In Judaism, of course, Seth was the third son of Adam and Eve, after Cain and Abel (Genesis 4 and 5). [...] Seth also shows up in writings of the ancient occult religious philosophy, the cabala, which was originated by certain Jewish rabbis who sought to interpret the scriptures through numerical values; the soul of Seth is seen as infusing Moses; he was to reappear as the Messiah….

[...] All was recorded, of course. Class lasted from 7 P.M. until after midnight, and by the time it was over everyone involved was, if not exhausted, certainly well exercised emotionally. [...]

[...] Now Ruburt called me originally (last Saturday night) at unconscious levels because he was upset with “earth programming.” [...] I was not speaking to Ruburt personally when he heard me, but addressing myself to the world at large in a program that was indeed picked up by others.

[...] This was of the brown structures on stilts, she said. When Seth mentioned shingles, Jane felt she was so far away from these buildings that she could “see” only a roughened surface. This scene was also at night.

(There was some kind of light, Jane said, perhaps from the building next door. The dark brown color of the buildings was hard for her to see. [...] She saw a mass of buildings in together, close together, and it was difficult to distinguish detail.

[...] Jane was pretty far-out, she said. [...] She said the concepts had been piling up ahead of her, and that Seth was all set to talk even faster. [...]

[...] Jane was again well dissociated, her eyes open often. Her pace was not quite as fast, since I asked her to slow down at last break.

Once this was done, nature it seemed could be dealt with, could be cajoled, tricked, or reasoned with as circumstances warranted. If a large area was besieged by stormy weather of any kind, then obviously a god must have somehow disapproved of human action. It was vital that the person so disapproved of be cast out. If any doubt was present then another person would be cast out or sacrificed. [...] If certain patterns of behavior were followed and the weather was pleasant, then those patterns of behavior must be ones that were safe. [...]

[...] It was then, and in the terms of this discussion, that men felt a division between themselves and “the gods,” for it was then that man began to personify the elements of nature.

[...] He still sensed nature’s grandeur—(louder:) but that grandeur was no longer his own, and he felt less and less a part of it. [...]

[...] In those terms it might think of itself as an animal who was sick—a big difference—and even then no self-disapproval would be indicated.

(Long pause at 9:55.) The Christ story in the beginning was not nearly as singular and neat as it might now seem, for the finally established official Christ figure was one settled upon from endless versions of a god-man, with which man’s psyche has long been involved: He was the psychic composite, the official Christ, carrying within his psychological personage echoes of old and new gods alike—a figure barely begun, comma, to be filled out in time, although originating outside of it (again, all very intently).

[...] It occurred—but Paul did not see, or communicate with (long pause), a person of divine heritage, sent by his father to earth, who lived the life of the official Christ, and who was crucified. Paul had a vision in response to the needs, desires, and dictates of his own psyche as it was connected to the world of his time, following the patterns of stories about Christ that he had heard that had begun to release within him a great yearning that was, in that vision, then, expressed.⁴

[...] Her delivery had been very slow but more intent than usual, and she was surprised and pleased: “How about that? [...] I’ll bet that’s why he didn’t say it was book dictation until the end of the session….”

(“Jesus, I ought to go in trance more often,” Jane laughed after she’d ended the session at 10:20 P.M. “I wasn’t aware of how I was sitting or anything. I was the most comfortable I’ve been all day….”)

First of all, what have you done recently that was of benefit in your situation? [...] The pendulum work was important because of the togetherness it entailed, the joint determination it symbolizes, and Ruburt’s decision to uncover any or all fears rather than hiding them.

[...] He felt that, and was moved, as always. [...] The response was immediate, spontaneous, and as complete as the moment and his physical condition allowed. [...]

[...] This morning’s pendulum session, while helpful, for the general reasons given earlier, was also however more of an exercise in what is wrong, again, and was not followed by any constructive suggestion at all.

[...] He was reacting to new stimuli, as is natural for the body. [...]

“The entity was born once as John the Baptist, and then he was born in two other forms. [...] There was constant communication between these three portions of one entity, though they were born and buried at different dates. The race called up these personalities from its own psychic bank, from the pool of individualized consciousness that was available to it.”

[...] Pretend, then, that you possessed within yourself the knowledge of all the world’s masterpieces in sculpture and art, that they pulsed as realities within you, but that you had no physical apparatus, no knowledge of how to achieve them, that there was neither rock nor pigment nor source of any of these, and you ached with the yearning to produce them. This, on an infinitesimally small scale, will perhaps give you, as an artist [this was addressed to Rob, of course], some idea of the agony and impetus that was felt.

“This was in your terms a primary cosmic dilemma, and one with which It wrestled until All That It Was was completely involved and enveloped within that cosmic problem.

“Dimly, through what you would call history, hardly remembered, there was such a state. It was a state of agony in which the powers of creativity and existence were known, but the ways to produce them were not known.

Basically she was not ready for marriage. Beside this her marriage had a deeply symbolic, frightening connotation that was deeply hidden. She felt that marriage was a trap—the trap again, you see, and that it was a hampering of freedom. [...]

(Jane said that while Seth was speaking she herself felt that Seth was convinced that Peggy would be really helped if the instructions were followed. Seth was especially concerned about the positive suggestion ideas being followed.

(The session tonight was very quiet. [...]

[...] It was a very successful one. [...]

(The day was about 32 when I left for 330, although Jane’s room was getting cold. There was no heat, and one of the staff had called maintenance, she said. [...]

[...] A maintenance man came, but couldn’t find out what was wrong with the heater. [...] Jane had to be covered while he was in the room, but for a long while I didn’t hear her complaining about this today.

[...] She was interrupted at 4:05 by Diana, who took her blood pressure — 102/64 — “just fine.” [...]

[...] Jane was surprised and touched.

(The day was very warm — 45 — as I left for 330. [...] Jane was upset when I got there — although her blotchy feet looked much better. [...]

(Last night, she estimated, her temperature had been 101 at 8:00, 101 at 11:00, and 101 at 3:00 a.m. At breakfast time it had been 99.3. After lunch it was 102.1. “Not bad,” the male aide who took it said.

[...] She was worried about Jeff’s reaction more than the temperature. [...]

[...] The antibiotic was all taken in by Jane; I’d seen it still dripping a few minutes ago. [...]

(This morning Jane’s neck was better; but since she was far from well we anticipated but another short session tonight, if we had one at all. Wednesdays are also witness nights, but since it was raining heavily we’d had no visitors. [...] She began dictating on schedule however, in a quiet voice as on Monday; her pacing was slow, her eyes dark.)

[...] Jane said she was fairly dissociated, somewhat to her surprise; she said she must have been, because she was not conscious of her neck while delivering the material.)

[...] She was smiling, her legs were crossed, she wore a brown sweater and skirt, she had dark long hair.

(Earlier she’d told me that she was both disappointed and impatient with her progress since we’d started this group of sessions on October 9. She’d wanted her decubiti healed in a week, she said, and to be sitting on the edge of the bed by now. [...] She was afraid, again, that if she was moving strongly or something like that, that she wouldn’t be able to turn it off right away if someone came in. It was getting to be vitals time.

(Today was a relatively quiet day for both of us. [...]

[...] This was more than she’d done yesterday, I think.

[...] It was definitely easier to do those doubled-up fingers on her right hand, since they were much more flexible now. [...]

[...] Actually, I was quite concerned with the quick passage of time, and the pressure to prepare manuscripts for publication. During the period that Seth was dictating this book, Rob was typing the two volumes of Seth’s previous work, The “Unknown” Reality, and adding innumerable notes that correlated Seth’s material with that of his earlier books. I knew that on session nights, Rob “lost” his work time on that project, and he still had to type up the latest book session on the following day, while all I had to do was … what? [...]

That book, The World View of Paul Cézanne, was published by Prentice-Hall in 1977. No sooner had I finished it, than another, similar experience happened, just as Seth was completing Psyche. The Afterdeath Journal of an American Philosopher: The World View of William James came the same way, like mental dictation; only where the Cézanne world view had specialized in art, the James world view was more comprehensive. It commented in depth upon our world since James’s death, and covered American history as it was related to spiritualism, psychology, and democracy.

[...] But if I was in trance, was Seth also? [...]

[...] He explained that these were our entity names, and I was half amused to have a male one, and to find Seth referring to me as “he” or “him.” When I had classes, Seth gave many students their entity names also, and there was much lively discussion over the names’ sexual designations.

[...] By now I sat down during sessions, and changes had taken place in my trance state so that the personality change was very marked. Rob was used to this, but Bill and Peg attended sessions only infrequently, and to Bill it was a constant source of amazement. [...]

Once my interest was aroused, I was really determined to find out where I went and what I did in my dreams. In one study of eight hundred of my own dreams, I was really surprised to find that only seventy of them took place in my old hometown, and even here, as a rule, the action involved the present rather than the past. [...]

[...] First of all, the emphasis was on the delivery of the Seth Material itself, as in the twice-weekly sessions Seth continued to explain the nature of nonphysical reality. [...] Along these lines, we embarked on long-distance tests with a psychologist and a year’s series of envelope tests in which Seth was asked to identify the contents of doubly-sealed envelopes. [...]

[...] Like many people, Mrs. Taylor was brought up on a combined emotional porridge of orthodox religion and Freud. [...] Actually, she was afraid that dreams would reveal her “lower” instincts. [...]

[...] Before a child was baptized it was considered to be the property of its parents, who could do with it as they wished, with no stigma attached.

[...] There was quite a bit more to the session but I didn’t think my memory of it was clear enough for accurate notes.)

The conscious mind was [therefore] expected to perform alone, so to speak, ignoring the highly intuitive inner information that is also available to it. It was not supposed to be aware of such data. [...]

(10:10.) In Western culture since the Industrial Revolution (after about 1760), the idea grew that there was little connection between the objects in the world and the individual. Now this is not a history book so I will not go into the reasons behind this idea, but will merely mention that it was an overreaction, in your terms at least, to previous religious concepts.