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By Roger A. "Pete" Peterson
The secrets of the
universe are hidden in the details of our experience. -Pete From late 1978 to early 1981, I published Coordinate Point, a magazine that explored the notion that there is much more to who we are than what we "officially" acknowledge, and that we create our own reality from the ideas we accept as belief. Its purpose was to provide people with a medium and an opportunity to share their personal thoughts and experiences concerning the nature of consciousness and the role of beliefs in the creation of our reality. The magazine was inspired by two things: my lifelong search for better answers to questions like who are we, what's reality, and what's the purpose of life; and The Seth Books by Jane Roberts and Robert F. Butts.
Seth, a nonphysical personality, shared his ideas about the nature of reality through Jane while her husband, Rob (Robert Butts), recorded and annotated each session. Jane also wrote many books on her own, including a book of poetry, before she died on September 5, 1984. Through the shared effort of Jane, Rob, and Seth, 25 books were written to explain how we create our own reality.
Understandably, Jane Roberts was an important person to me, and still is. Not only did she respond to articles in Coordinate Point, she and Rob exchanged holiday cards and letters with my wife, Sandra, and I. She hand painted her cards and, along with copies of Coordinate Point, all have been sent to Yale University, the official archive of the Seth material.
Needless to say, when a close friend of Jane's, Sue Watkins, wrote to tell me she wanted to write a book in Jane's memory, I was interested. Sue said she was contacting known readers of the Seth material to see if they had experienced any unusual dream or psychic activity involving Jane before or since her death. If she found enough material, she would write a book. Below is an edited version of the story I shared with Susan in response to her request. It describes several unique experiences I had involving Jane shortly before and after her death.
After Jane's illness became so serious she needed to be hospitalized, I started sending her healing energy whenever I thought about it during meditation. During these healing sessions, I would think of her lying in a hospital bed somewhere in Elmira, New York. Using my hands, I would send her healing energy from my bedroom here in California. One day as I sat meditating and the thought of sending Jane healing energy surfaced in my mind, I felt a huge surge of energy fill my body and the air around me. Excited by the presence of this much energy, I thought, why not deliver it in person? Sitting quietly in my bedroom in Santa Rosa, I mentally searched for Jane in Elmira, even though I had no idea where the catholic hospital was, or where Jane was located within it. When a dozing image of her came into view, I projected myself into her hospital room. With almost my entire consciousness now focused in my astral body, I lay in the air, parallel to the floor at the level of Jane's body. Placing one hand above her body and the other one beneath her body, inside the mattress, I attempted to move them up and down her body but with little success. Realizing I had no leverage with my ghostly feet in the air, I put them down on the floor beside her bed. Now, with one hand beneath her body and the other one above, it was easy for me to move my hands up and down the entire length of Jane's body, bathing it in healing energy. I concentrated on revitalizing her cellular and organ structures. After several minutes of intense energy projection, Jane's body
began to respond. I could feel it waking up, coming to life! Suddenly, and
without warning, an angry image of Jane's face appeared before me in California,
drawing my full attention back to my physical body. After a slight pause to size
me up, she yelled, "Stop it!" Her anger was unmistakable and shocking.
For a frozen moment, my mind's eyes locked on hers; then she disappeared. After
this dramatic encounter, I stopped sending Jane healing energy entirely and a
short while later, she died.
Following Jane's disappearance, all I
could do was wonder why she yelled at me. Addressing her vanished image, I
asked, What's wrong, Jane, don't you like me? Aren't I good? Don't you want
my healing energy? As my despair grew, I realized I was taking this
matter too personally. Maybe Jane had her own reasons for reacting the way she
did. Attempting to be more objective, I began to ask myself questions like, Can
it be that she was simply startled by my intimate, nonmaterial presence? A ghost
would startle me! Or did she find my energy to be incompatible with hers? Was I
being too aggressive or intimate in my approach? My hands weren't directly
touching her but as I moved them up and down her length, I could feel the
various internal and external structures and contours of her body through the
energy field surrounding my hands. Obviously, I was still being defensive
because my second round of questions seemed little more than an attempt to
rationalize Jane's reaction.
It wasn't until months later, when I received Susan's letter
asking readers if they had any psychic experiences surrounding Jane's death,
that I was able to take a truly objective look at my angry-Jane experience. By
this time the painful memory of my despair, like a dragon's fiery breath, had
subsided and I was able to think clearly about the matter. Could it be that Jane
just didn't want to go on living, despite the many protests she made to the
contrary to Rob and Seth? Did she feel she had done enough? With this new line
of questioning, Jane's reaction began to make sense. It was as if she had taken
all of her physical beauty, her health and her mobility, and poured them into
the contents of hers and Seth's books. She did it of her own free will, but once
it was done, I could see how she might feel that there was just too little left
of her to enjoy in physical terms. Also, because of the material's profound
significance, I could see how her readers might find it difficult to let her
"finish" her work. Would she let herself finish it? There always seemed to be
more Seth wanted to say.
My intent in sending Jane healing energy was good; however, I
didn't ask her if she wanted to be healed. I assumed she wanted
to get better because that's what she kept telling Rob when he challenged her
determination to get better. Seth also tried to help her with healing
suggestions, which didn't seem to work. My approach was direct and effective,
something Jane couldn't ignore if what she really wanted to do was die. Until
now it didn't occur to me that someone might want to die. I just never thought
about it before. Now that I've had a chance to think about it, it makes perfect
sense. I remember being sick with the flu one time and for about an hour I felt
so bad I wanted to die. So, there are times and situations where death is
preferable to life. That's a good thing to know. From now on I'll ask people for
permission before I try to help them. Who knows better than the individual
involved what they want most?
Following the healing incident with Jane before her death, I experienced several more visionary encounters with her after she died. These were light and playful, and included sexual behavior. In my early post-death visions, a beautiful and nude young Jane would sit on my lap to engage in sex with me. While our encounters were playful and loving on the surface, I knew there was a deeper significance to them. As we made love, I felt a bonding taking place between us. It went deeper than the bond we create from the sharing of mutual pleasure; it was the bond of commitment that forms when individuals share a common cause. Our common cause is human evolution. Like Jane and Rob, my passion is the truth of our being and the development of our full human and spiritual potential.
Excerpts
from ESSAY 1 {Pages 16-17, Prentice Hall Press, Hardcover Edition} Thursday,
April 1, 1982 "Let
my soul find shelter elsewhere". That
evocative, prophetic line is from a Sumari song that Jane sang to herself a few
days before she went into an Elmira, New York, hospital on February 26, 1982.
Sumari is a "language" she can speak or sing while in trance, and
which she can translate into English if and when she wants to. She recorded her
brief song in a sad, low-pitched, quavering voice that was like none I'd heard
her use before. Its indescribable depth of feeling was remarkably prescient in
light of the events in our lives that preceded--and then followed--the hospital
experience that affected us so much. Indeed,
I didn't learn that Jane had made the tape until five weeks later, after she'd
returned to our hill house from the hospital: I found it on March 30 (1982), amid
others in her writing room. She hadn't labeled it, and I began to play it out
of curiosity. The song's mournful tones swam heavily in the room. It reminded
me at once of a dirge or an elegy, and I felt chills as I began to intuitively understand
just how meaningful it was, even without any translation at all. "Let
my soul find shelter elsewhere," Jane said, by way of a quick translation
when I played the tape for her a few minutes later. It was midafternoon on a
cold day. She sat bundled up in her chair in the living room, her head down as
she listened. I asked her for more on the song's interpretation, but she just
repeated that line. She roused herself enough to stubbornly maintain that she'd
give me more later. I knew at once that the tape's contents were so revealing
of her feelings about her illness, so disturbing and frightening, that she
couldn't bring herself to explore those deep emotions at that time. I also knew
that my wife feared the effect of the message upon me--for what could the
phrase she'd already given me mean, except that her soul had at least
considered the possibility of leaving her physical body, perhaps to find
shelter in a nonphysical realm? I accepted her reactions, and could only
wait in some frustration as I began work on other parts of this essay. -
Robert F. Butts According
to Rob,
{P.18} Jane entered the hospital on February 26, 1982, to spend ...31
days there, being treated for a severely underactive thyroid gland
(hypothyroidism), protruding eyes and double vision, an almost total hearing
loss, a slight anemia, and budding bedsores, or decubitus ulcers. At
this time, Jane was also diagnosed as having "rheumatoid Arthritis" {P.19}. After
a brief introduction by Rob, Jane, herself, describes her state of mind shortly
after returning home from the hospital: {P.
20-24} After some hesitation following my question about having a (Jane
channeling Seth) session this evening, Jane decided she wanted to contribute
introductory material for Dreams. This was to be a new experience for
us: Because of the arthritis she was having trouble even holding a pen, so she
intended to dictate her material as though she were writing it herself in
longhand. I was to take it down for her. This wasn't to be Seth speaking. (7:10
P.M. Thursday, April 1, 1982. Once she began dictation, Jane's pace was good.
In fact, I had to write very rapidly, for I didn't want to ask her to slow down
during this initial experiment.) Seth
uses the term "value fulfillment" as in the title of this book, to
imply life's greater values and characteristics--that is, we are alive not only
to continue to ensure life's existence, but to add to the very quality of life
itself. We do not just receive the torch of life and pass it on as one Olympic
runner does to another, but we each add to that living torch or flame a power,
a meaning, a quality that is uniquely our own. We do this as individuals, as
members of the family, the community, and members of the species. Whenever that
flame shows signs of dimming, of losing rather than gaining potential energy
and desire, then danger signals appear everywhere. They show up as wars and
social disorders on national scales, and as household crises, as illnesses (pause),
as calamities on personal levels as well. In Dreams,
"Evolution," and Value Fulfillment Seth outlines the great cosmic
and private energies that in our terms once brought into existence the reality
of the universe and the birth of those private, cohesive realities in which our
own individual daily lives are couched. (7:20) It is impossible in our
time scheme to intellectually know our own potentials without trying them out,
without testing them against the world's edges. We must activate our impulses
and desires, try out our abilities, seek out our strengths by joyfully
advancing into the given world of physical energy, physical time and space. In
the development of each individual we act and reenact the startling events that
brought our own universe into existence. The universe was not created in
some dim past, but is newly recreated by our own thoughts, dreams, and
desires--so that reality happens at all possible levels at once. And in that
living endeavor we each play our part. When
we hesitate, hold back, falter, when we hold back energy in the hopes of saving
it, when we allow fear rather than trust to guide our activities, when the quality
of our lives becomes less than we know it should be--then warnings flash. (Long
pause.) One crisis after another may arise to gain our attention. This has
happened in many people's lives--and so recently the same kind of warning
appeared in my own life. As
I write this introduction, I am recovering from a group of illnesses,
recuperating from a month's stay in the hospital, and now I'm trying to see
where my personal situation fits into Seth's larger views. That is, the
individual is not just a side issue in what people usually call the
evolutionary process--but he or she is the entire issue, without which
there would be no species, no survival, no exquisite web of genetic
cooperation to produce living creatures of any kind whatsoever. "Well,
I need a cigarette," Jane abruptly said at 7:36. "You
did terrifically, hon," I exclaimed, patting her on a knee.
"Terrific." "Yeah,
I knew I got it--thank God," she replied. Then we sat quietly side by side
at the round card table we'd placed at one end of our battered old couch in the
living room. In a far corner a sitcom rerun played on the large-screen
television set. I'd turned off the sound before the session began. The whole
room was bathed in a friendly, subdued yellow light. A rather strong northerly
wind periodically rattled the house's metal blinds. The whole creative intimacy
of our hill house was one that we'd enjoyed many times; we desperately wanted
to return to that same ambience many more times. "Well,
I don't know--maybe that's all I can do tonight," Jane finally said, with
a bit of an embarrassed grin. "It's hard for me to get into the next
part…." But then at 7:45:) In
our other books I'd mentioned my physical symptoms now and then. By the time
Seth finished dictating Dreams last month (On February 8),
however, my physical condition had deteriorated. Two weeks later I could hardly
get out of my chair onto the couch or the bed. After answering approximately 50
letters one (Jane
meant, of course, a CT or computerized tomography scanner, a modern X-ray
machine that shows the interior of the body in a series of brilliant
cross-sectional images.) (With
a laugh at 7:51:) Later that same bare backside, thin and bony, was pressed against
another metal table, while this time electrodes were attached to every
available area of my head so that an electroencephalogram could be taken. No
instructions were given to me except to close my eyes as the test progressed. (Pause.)
Some kind of white gum, or glue, had been rubbed into my scalp through my
hair to improve the electrical contacts, and when the test was finished the
attendant simply grabbed one area of the equipment and pulled the entire mess
off my head in one motion--which felt like my entire scalp was coming off. The
obvious unconcern on the part of that middle-aged female attendant made me
furious. "Value
Fulfillment?" I thought. "What the hell am I letting myself in for?
And how have the events of my life come to such a turn?" This was, of
course, as anyone familiar with hospitals knows, only the beginning. There were
numberless blood tests. I also had to be lifted onto and off the bed, onto and
off the portable commode. (Pause
at 8:05.)
My 82 pounds of flesh were hauled, dragged, pulled, and stretched by
good-natured but often impatient strangers--nurses and orderlies and aides--and
the most private of my physical processes became a matter of public record.
What a shocker! "See,
I never know how much to put in these intros," Jane said. "So many
different kinds of people read the books--" "Just
do it your own way," I said. "The hell with it. There's nothing else
you can do." I
remember when I had my first bowel movement at the hospital. Eyes closed to
hold back tears of humiliation, I felt my arms lifted by an orderly (long
pause), my thin belly and ribs straining in the brightly lit room, my
backside lifted and supported by two other strange arms, while a third
person--I don't want to sound too vulgar-- (8:12.
"Forget it," I said. "We'll fix it if necessary.") --wiped
away the results of the three strong doses of prune juice I'd been given. Yet
there was, I knew, a fellowship even in those processes--one that I had perhaps
too long ignored: the quality of fellowship, as a species or a family or a
community comes together to help one of its own kind. And as I was to see, even
for all of the pessimistic suggestions of medical science itself, in the very
middle of crisis there was a certain indisputable sense of cooperation--a
"vulgar" physical optimism, and a kind of humor that I had long
forgotten existed. (8:21.) In this book, Seth does
discuss to some degree the nature of certain illnesses as they apply to
individual life and genetic survival. And there I lay in the hospital for a
full month, with physical survival uppermost in my mind--hardly a coincidence.
They told me that my thyroid gland was very underactive, and that I had
arthritis. They X-rayed my hands but not my knees. One of the blood tests
showed that I was slightly anemic. But other tests and X-rays revealed that I
had sound lungs--in spite of my smoking--a good heart and stomach and other
organs. I laughed. (Long
pause at 8:22. I thought Jane was tiring. She might have added that she also
laughed because neither did she have a brain tumor, cancer, vasculitis [an
inflammation of the blood vessels], or any of several other diseases the
doctors thought might be present. She felt she'd beaten a number of negative
suggestions from medical personnel in connection with all of those afflictions.) I
liked practically all of the doctors and nurses and orderlies, and they liked me.
Most of them didn't know or care "who I was." Very few were familiar
with my work (although a few local fans--strangers--eventually found their way
to my hospital room). I found I could hold my own in that environment that at
first had seemed so alien. I learned to joke even as my backside swung
perilously above the commode, while I hoped that its aim was true in the hands
of the nurses and orderlies--and again I felt that long-forgotten camaraderie
with people, and a growth within myself apart from my work, or what I did. I
had a right to be on earth because I'd been born here like every other physical
creature, and on that level alone I was part of a great framework of physical
energy and cooperation. (8:31
P.M.) "Well, that's all for now," Jane said after a long pause.
"I sure am surprised I did that much. I didn't know I could do
it--especially that way...I'd never have tried it if you hadn't suggested
it." Jane
hadn't dictated this material while in a trance or a dissociated state, as she
does when producing her Seth material. She hadn't felt particularly inspired,
nor at all sure how to proceed. It was just that she's always used longhand or
a typewriter for her own work, she said, and never dictated it, as many writers
do these days. Just the same, her creative abilities had immediately come to
her aid. Jane
continues in: ESSAY
2 Monday,
April 5, 1982 {P.
25-26} (7:15 P.M. Our next "Jane session" took place four
days later, on the date shown above. Once again we sat at the card table in the
living room. And once again Jane wavered at times between waking and dozing.
When she did begin dictation, though, her pace was good.) In
later years it's become impossible for me to close my eyes to the multiple
pressing differences that exist between Seth's explanation of the nature of
reality, and of our own private experience of it. In this book, Dreams,
"Evolution," and Value fulfillment, for example, Seth portrays us
as a vibrant, well-intended species--a physically attuned kind of consciousness
beautifully tailored by our own cosmic ingredients to live lives of
productivity, of spiritual and physical enjoyments, with each individual life
in charge of its own fate and adding to the potentials of all other life as
well. Yet,
I read all of those dire newspaper stories predicting disaster, and (oh yes,
dear readers) I watched the daily tragic news events dramatized in living color
on our television screen. But more than that, I've seen in my own life the
steady accumulation of physical symptoms. If
life has such great potentials, as Seth maintains, if it began--and begins (and
continues to begin) at such rich creative and productive levels--then
why did our experience so often make it seem that we struggled against
unknowing or uncaring cosmic forces, or that we were at the most so ignorant of
our own source and creativity that our hands were tied, or that we were forever
shut off from our natural heritage? There
was no doubt that we'd been reading ourselves "wrong." There
was no doubt as far as I was concerned that every one of our standard
explanations for life (pause) were relatively useless now, regardless of
how much they might have helped or hindered us in the past. (Long
pause at 7:51.) It began to strike me that even my own physical
incapacities were indeed creative ventures that appeared in my experience as
bad, or limiting, or even tragic. Perhaps they were instead efforts on the part
of my own explorations of value fulfillment to reorganize my life's vast
energies. But instead of facing up to a considerable change in life-style, I
panicked and felt myself to be almost assaulted, forced into a life that
offered less and less physical freedom. So again, how did that experience fit
into Seth's Dreams, Evolution," and Value Fulfillment? As
far as I can see, I've been living with two sets of "facts", for some
years. The old established explanations had faltered, and finally seemed almost
incomprehensible, while the new explanations of Seth seemed beyond my reach, at
least in certain areas--areas that were vital to physical and psychic peace.
The same processes appeared in my husband Rob's life, of course, as our lives
seemed to impinge into the area of man's greatest hopes, and into the opposite
area of his greatest fears. Excerpts
from ESSAY 3 Friday,
April 16, 1982 According
to Rob, the next two paragraphs (plus two others I've omitted) were hand
written by Jane "painfully" while "holding her pen
awkwardly". {P.
32-34} (9:30 A.M. Friday, April 16, 1982.) So,
one thing I know: I'm a far different person now as I write this introduction
than I was when Seth dictated the book. And as he spoke of the beginnings of
the world, I began to play with the idea of quietly ending my own private
sphere of existence. Not through a violent suicide, but through a
half-calculated general retreat. Few
overt hints of this appear in Rob's notes for Dreams. For one thing, the
process of withdrawal was slow at the start. For another, when Seth was more
than three quarters of the way through Dreams he began devoting a series
of private sessions to an in-depth discussion of "the magical
approach"--material that was calculated to help me personally, and others
like me, change our approach to experience and thus experience itself. Rob's
detailed notes about my physical condition, then, appear in those pages. (11:30.
Finally I began writing down Jane's words as I'd done before….) Indeed,
Seth's material on the magical approach {Now a finished book, thanks to Rob,
called The Magical Approach: Seth Speaks About the Art of Creative Living.}
was so fascinating that by the time he finished Dreams I'd already put
together large portions of it in a separate book, even if much of it was
personal. Not only that, but those "magical" sessions had naturally
developed into another series, this time on a portion of the personality
Seth called "the sinful self"--mine as well as that of others--and
those sessions had in turn led me to produce many pages of material directly
from my own sinful self. That great personal revelation took place in June
1981. Ironically, then, in the midst of my own half-conscious withdrawal I'd
been giving birth to not only Seth's Dreams, but several other
intriguing long-range concepts. And even if all of those sessions had been born
out of my own psychic and psychological challenges and dilemmas, I knew they
were excellent and deserved publication. I
could feel Rob hoping that my own efforts would help me. In a hundred ways he
tried his best to help me on his own. Seth resumed work on Dreams during
that July, but each day I seemed to work less and less. Summer turned into
fall, then winter, and I hardly noticed. I began to doze in my chair as I sat
at my desk. On occasion I was consciously aware of thinking how easy it might
be on certain levels to let my desires drop one by one--there seemed to be few
left in any case--and let myself drift off into an unastonished death. That
is, I thought it could happen so easily and naturally and painlessly that there
would be no one point where you could say, "Now she lives and now she
doesn't." Maybe
I produced all I was meant to. Maybe the fire of my life was coming to its own
natural conclusion. Why try to fan it into life again, particularly if its
initial joy had forever vanished? Maybe that course was better than the
determination and painful discomforts that might be necessary to prolong lifely
existence. So I was to some extent only half alarmed to hear from some strange
inner existence my own voice slow down. Tremors appeared in it, as if the
vowels and symbols had endless gaps--uneven edges--and some part of me was
escaping like smoke even between my words. (11:35.
"Let me relax for a minute," Jane said. Her pace had been fast. Then
more slowly:)
My
hearing began to fail, at first gradually. Let people talk around me, I
thought: I no longer cared. Then with bewildering impact I found myself one day
almost entirely deaf. Here was no gentle lulling silence, for the absence of
sound frightened me beyond anything I could remember. (Long pause.) Was
Rob in the room? If I couldn't see him I couldn't tell. Did he stand
protectively just behind my chair, ready to help me in my maneuvers into bed,
or was he in the kitchen, rooms away? There were no sounds of footsteps upon
the carpeted floors, no telltale hint of activity. The experience interrupted
my retreat. I remember somehow equating all the silence about me with a
forbidding white wall. And in parentheses: (I don't know why I felt that
way, but I did.) I couldn't die deaf (Jane said with a laugh at 11:45).
I think I had imagined that everything would shut down gradually. I certainly
hadn't planned on one sense suddenly turning off. The
next few days, in mid-February 1982, found me determined to clear up the
hearing problem--and on one level at least, it was that determination that led
me finally to the hospital emergency room…. {P.
35-41} (This evening [on April 16] Jane suggested that we sit at our living
room table while I read her morning's dictation to her. But instead:
"Well, I guess I'll do a Seth thing tonight," she announced, rather
to my surprise, "but it won't be long at all…." This is the second
time she's spoken for Seth since leaving the hospital. When she went into
trance at 7:39 her Seth voice had a distinct tremor--one decidedly more
pronounced than on April 12--and a hard-to-define faraway quality. She spoke
with many long pauses. I think that in the following excerpts Seth rather
neatly encapsulates her past beliefs, her present condition, and how far she
has yet to go in meeting her challenges. [Not that I'm the innocent bystander
in all of this, of course. I'm deeply involved.]) Now:
the same process involving the thyroid gland has happened several times in his (Rubert's)
{Seth--who claims to be discarnate--calls Jane by her male "entity
name," Ruburt, and thus the use of "he" and "him."}
life, and in each of those cases it has repaired itself. If
earlier, however, Ruburt had the erroneous idea that he was going too fast--or
would or could--and had to restrain himself and 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 of the conviction of 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) had helped impair his hearing to an alarming degree. Moreover,
here is the medication necessary--the thyroid supplement--that will right that
balance. And so it will. (Long pause at 7:46.) If Ruburt once
found himself imagining that he must be strong and perfect enough to help solve
everyone else's problems, now he found himself relatively helpless and
"undefended"--that is, his physical condition put him in [such a
situation]. The superperfect, (7:58.) impractical self-image simply fell
away. It could not survive such a situation. (7:50.) So contrary to its
{his} own beliefs, and helpless or not, Ruburt was holding his own…. There
was a certain comradeship existing between himself and others [in the
hospital]. Desires and impulses became more immediate, clearer-cut, easier to
identify. The discomforts of a physical nature led to instant responses.... His
weaknesses were out in the open, dramatically presented, and from that point,
unless he chose death he could only go forward--for suddenly he felt that there
was after all some room to move, that achievements were possible, where
before all accomplishments seemed beside the point in the face of his expected
superhuman activity. He will,
then, continue to improve, because he has allowed himself some room for motion,
for change of value fulfillment. Trust the body's rhythms as these changes
occur, however. Going out in the yard (as Jane did this afternoon in a wheel
chair, accompanied by her nurse) was an excellent case in point, important
on practical and symbolic levels. (Long
pause at 8:01.) In a manner of speaking, the sinful self created the superhuman
self-image that demanded so much, and it encased Rubert's body as if in concrete.
Well, that image cracked and crumbled in the hospital experience, leaving
Ruburt with his more native, far more realistic image of himself. It is one he
can work with. Do, when you can, look over my "magical approach"
material. Ruburt kept turning down his thermostat, so to speak. Now his desires
and intents have set it upon a healthy, reasonable setting, and the inner
processes are automatically activated to bring about the normal quickening of
his body, as before his intent led to the body's automatic slowness. Enough
for this evening. I bid you a fond good evening--and know that you have taken,
both of you, important new strides. (Good
night, Seth, I said.) (8:10
P.M. Jane's Seth voice had grown a little stronger as she progressed with the
session. We were very encouraged by two key points Seth had mentioned: that her
thyroid gland had repaired itself before--such an event happening now would
free her of dependence upon medication--and that her sinful self's superhuman
image had "cracked and crumbled in the hospital experience." Those
two developments could leave her body free to heal itself…. "I
wonder what you'll be doing six months from now, if Seth's right?" I
asked. "The body finally became so desperate to free itself from that
rigid sinful-self superhuman image that it took itself into the hospital for a
month--even if it did almost kill itself in order to get there…."; Jane
concurred. And right away she described several occasions when she thought her
thyroid gland had rather seriously misbehaved. I remember two of them.) After
the session I began to wonder what Jane's "sinful self" would have to
say now, in comparison to the material she'd received from it in June 1981.
During that fervent bout of activity her sinful self had explained and defended
its actions most eloquently throughout some 36 closely handwritten pages. Both
of us had been appalled at the revelations coming through Jane's pen, even if
we did grudgingly admit that we understood, intellectually at least, many of
the points that self made. I'd grown very angry as the material unfolded--angry
at that portion of Jane's psyche for clinging so tenaciously to such a set of
beliefs, for whatever reasons, and angry at myself for not understanding any
better than she did their extent and depth, and just how damaging they could be
in ordinary terms. I'd also been reminded of material Seth himself had given a
few weeks earlier, in a very important private session on April 16: "Many
of Rubert's beliefs have changed, but the core belief in the sinful self has
been very stubborn. (To me:) While you do not possess it in the same
fashion, you are also tainted by it, picking up such beliefs from early
background, and primarily from your father in that regard…." …Certainly
Jane chose all of her challenges in this life, just as I did, and as we
believe each person does, but a major concomitant of focusing upon certain
activities involves how one copes with them (often in close cooperation with
others) as the years pass. What new and original depths of feeling and idea are
uncovered, layer by layer, what new insights, what rebellions, and, yes, what
acceptances…. I
could write many windy pages about the mysteries of life, I suppose, and how
each of us does the best we can, although often we may not understand what
we're doing; but what I really want to do is simply note that in her case,
fortunately, and even if she thinks she's failed in certain major areas of
life, Jane has achieved some remarkable insights into her own situation (as I
have into mine, being her marriage partner). She's managed to do this with the
help of various portions of her own personality, the Seth material, and me. Our
hope is that her case can help illuminate others. There are reasons--creative
reasons--why she can't walk now, or write in longhand. We insist upon
knowing what those reasons are. Some of them were obviously engendered by and
within Jane's so-called sinful self. What challenges she and I have to meet!
Once again, let me quote Seth from that private session Jane held just a year
ago, on April 16, 1981: "Your kind of consciousness, relatively speaking,
involves some intrinsic difficulties along with spectacular potentials. You are
learning how to form reality from your own beliefs, while having at the same time
the freedom to choose those beliefs--to choose your mental state in a
way that the animals, for example, do not. In that larger picture (underlined)
there are no errors, for each action, pleasant or not, will in its fashion
be redeemed, both in relationship to itself and...to a larger picture that
the conscious mind may not be able presently to perceive. Fine.
We agree with Seth's overall view, and that a sublime mystery is implied--but
we also want to achieve as much as we can of that redemption now, and on conscious
physical and psychological levels. At
the end of May and early in June 1981 we published two books involving years of
effort: Seth-Jane's The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, and
Jane's The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto. I was positive that those
volumes contained much excellent work. I was also positive that with their
publication Jane's symptoms--especially her walking difficulties--became
considerably worse. On the surface at least, it was as though some powerful
portion of her psyche (was) exacting a grim compensation for the books'
appearance in the marketplace. Perhaps, I thought, that portion was creating a
physical disability that allowed Jane to publish forbidden material while
protectively isolating herself--and me--from rejection by the physical world.
Both of us became terribly upset. Our joint lifework teetered upon the edge of a
physical disaster. It could hardly have been accidental, then, that beginning on June 17, 1981, our deep need led to Jane's spontaneous production of her own sinful-self material. The way had been illuminated by Seth himself in his private sessions, with his discussions of her sinful self and related challenges: Those sessions, the publication of the two books, Jane's personal sinful-self material and her worsening physical situation, all combined to serve as a complex trigger. Here are those promised, very revealing passages. Again, my few insertions are bracketed.
Statement (Confession?) of the Sinful Self I resent
the designation unjustly given to me, for if I have believed in the phenomenon
of sin and sought--apparently too rigidly--to avoid it, my intentions and
interests always were not the avoidance of sin so much as the pursuit of
eternal truths; the alliance with universal goals, the unity in spirit at least
of self, whole self, and universal mind. Those goals ignite your creative
powers and have (and still do) propelled you to explore all categories of
existence possible, seeking to express those divine mysteries that lie within
and behind each existence--yours, and mine as well. Our
explorations involved no secondhand evidence handed down by others, but the
direct personal encounter of our consciousness and being with the vast elements
of the unknown--a meeting of the self (human and vulnerable) with the
psychological realms of gods and eternities; giant realms of mind that our
nature felt attracted to...and [was] uniquely equipped to perceive. I
believed in the soul's survival first of all, and inspired the "creative
self" to step out as freely as possible even while in my heart I [also]
believed in the existence of sin and devil. I felt upon my heart the heavy
unkind mark of Cain, sensing that humanity carries (unfairly) the almost
indelible strain--the tragic flaw--[of] being tinged by sin and ancient
iniquities. Thusly I reasoned: If I am flawed I must automatically distort even
those experiences of the soul that seem clearest. I must unwittingly fall into
error when I trust myself the most, since I share that sinful propensity. Yet
despite these feelings did I (did we) unswervingly set forward. The
belief in sin and in the sinful self has been for uncounted centuries embedded
in man's concepts about himself and God. Around those beliefs civilizations
evolved and religions orbited. So I maintain that I am being unfairly attacked
(perhaps that is too strong a word) for personally accepting in my own
understanding a philosophy to which ten millions and more have also succumbed,
and to which the "wisest" of the species have given their loyalty and
trust. Yet
even in our [Jane's] childhood years I yearned to free us from such doctrines,
to search for alternate explanations, to go where no man or woman had gone
before, and to venture outside the boundaries of all official beliefs. And
to me this was no play but the main challenge--to discover while within one
life all life's meaning; to acquire in one life's vulnerable swiftness evidence
of eternity's breadth and depth, to sniff out its extended unknown dimensions.
So if in the pursuit of such goals I overdid my cautions and overreacted, it
certainly was not out of malice, but in a well-meaning attempt to protect the
creative self--to keep a hand of caution on its course lest the centuries of
man's belief in sin carried a true weight that I shared but could not
comprehend. Easy
enough to discard this or that symbol of evil, but suppose all such symbols hid
some deep truth, and So
the belief in man's sinful nature persisted in my mind, a constant reminder of
man's ignorance of his own nature. How could I be sure that our sight
wasn't also distorted; that our sin" was in not accepting sin as a
value? Perhaps sin itself contained some value that escaped beyond our
calculations, still undiscovered. So
in a fashion [Jane's] physical symptoms became a psychological disclaimer, so
that in some court of larger values we could not be "sued" for
leading others astray from entrenched beliefs that we were still discarding,
while not having any completed structure that would allow easy access or safe
passage from one "life raft" to the new one that we were
trying to provide…. But--it
now becomes evident--I was myself tinged not by sin in a metaphysical sense (as
I thought I might me), but with a belief in sin (itself) that I had not
dismissed. Therefore the disclaimer was necessary to protect myself and others
from any fatal flaw in our work--a flaw that sin's blindness made invisible…. And
so on. It all was--and is--great material, and more accurate and penetrating
than my own ideas as to why some portion of Jane's psyche might feel a need for
protection from the world, or from another part of herself.
Excerpts
from ESSAY 4 Saturday,
April 17, 1982 {P.
43-45} (7:30 P.M. ...Jane said she'd like to do some more dictation of her
0wn...) (Long
pause at 7:34.) ...if spontaneous order was such a vital ingredient in the workings of
the universe, then what was I doing trying to shut it down in my own life? (Long
pause at 7:40.) In the meantime, Rob and I often thought that this very book would
never be completed. I might decide that I'd given enough years and energy to
the Seth pursuit. Without making any conscious decision, I might simply cease
having sessions. (Long pause.) I did continue with the sessions,
of course. The book is finished. I realize more and more that life's experience
is played out in a framework that stretches between life's contrasts. We
live in a world slung between our dearest hopes and greatest fears, while
seldom encountering either in their pure form. (7:48.
Jane spoke with much emphasis here. As if on cue, through an open front window
a quickening breeze stirred the long glass wind chimes hanging just inside;
their pealing harmony filled the living room. The chimes had been sent to us by
fans we've never met.) Value
fulfillment is the largest issue here, both with Seth's book and my own
experience, and if I really understood what Seth was saying in this book, I
would not have needed to undergo such an uncomfortable drama in my daily life. (Long
pause at 7:51.) Our vitality wants to express itself. The whole world of nature is an
irrepressible, expressible area of expansion. Old ideas of the survival of the
fittest, conventional evolutionary processes, gods and goddesses, cannot hope
to explain the "mystery of the universe"--but when we use our own
abilities gladly and freely, we come so close to being what we are that
sometimes we come close to being what the universe is. Then even our most unfortunate
escapades, our most sorrowful ventures are not deadended, but serve as doorways
into a deeper comprehension and a more meaningful relationship with the
universe of which we are such a vital part. (7:58.
"End of introduction," Jane abruptly said.)
Excerpts
from ESSAY 8 Sunday,
May 23, 1982 {P.
75} In our ceaseless search for answers to an unending list of personal
questions, we discussed the notion that in her own way Jane has described a
circle from her childhood: Her parents, Marie and Delmer, were married in
Saratoga Springs, a well-known resort town in upper New York State, in 1928.
They were divorced in 1931, when Jane was two years old. (Jane didn't see her
father again--he came from a broken home himself--until she was 21.) By the time
Jane was three years old, her mother was having serious problems with
rheumatoid arthritis. Indeed, the daughter has only one conscious memory of
seeing her mother on her feet. All we have are a few photographs Del took of
Marie not long after their marriage. They show a beautiful woman wearing a
bathing suit, standing on a beach in Florida. Some
of our other books contain more information on how Jane grew up fatherless, and
with a Marie who soon became bedridden and embittered. Mother and child were
supported by welfare, and assisted over the years by a series of itinerant
housekeepers--a number of these were prostitutes who, according to Jane, were
periodically thrown out of "work" when town officials would shut down
the "houses," try to clean up gambling, and so forth. Marie was a
brilliant, angry woman who lived in near-constant pain, and who regularly
abused her daughter through behavior that, if not psychotic, was certainly
close to it. (She would terrify the young Jane by stuffing cotton in her mouth
and pretending she'd committed suicide, for example.) Jane also spent time in a
strictly run Catholic orphanage. Her father died in 1971, when he was 68. Her
mother died in 1972, at the same age; Jane, who hadn't seen Marie for a number
of years, did not attend the funeral. I didn't urge her to do so either. For my
part, I'd always felt uneasy in Marie's presence on the few occasions we Met. From
The God
of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto, Jane states in her own words that: {P.
40-42.} My parents were divorced by the time I was three years old, but most of
my childhood friends came from broken homes too, so that didn't particularly
bother me. My mother was a bed-ridden arthritic invalid; I'd never seen her
walk; and that I did consider a special circumstance. We were on
welfare--hardly an unusual situation--but I was the only kid I knew who was
being supported by taxpayers' money, and this was a special circumstance in my
mother's mind and in mine; one we railed against constantly. I
wrote poetry as far back as I can remember, at home, in school, anywhere,
everywhere, and at any time. To me this represented another special
circumstance; one that seemed to give me some kind of uneasy status, as if I
possessed a definite recognizable ability that no one new quite what to do
with--a remarkable but relatively worthless talent to someone in my particular
position. Again,
those situations are hardly outstanding in life's larger context, but in my
home town they seemed to set me apart. I also spent nearly two years in an
institution called St. Vincent's Female Orphanage while my mother was in a
hospital, and on my return home I didn't particularly feel like "one of
the gang." Other
events that most people didn't know about set me apart in my own mind too. One
day my mother would say that she loved me, and the next day she'd scream that
she was sorry I'd ever been born--that I'd ruined her life. She blamed me for
the death of her mother who went out one evening to buy me shredded
wheat for supper and was killed in an automobile accident. I was six. She also
blamed me for the death of our favorite housekeeper, who died of a stroke in my
arms when I was thirteen, right after the three of us had an argument. My
mother would often stuff her mouth with cotton and hold her breath, pretending
that she was dead, to scare me when I was small. In later years when I was in
grade school and high school, she'd threaten suicide, sometimes saying that
she'd also mail a letter to the police stating that I'd murdered her. And she
did attempt suicide four or five times. She
was on all kinds of medically prescribed drugs, which helps explain some of her
actions; and if she could be "a terror," she was also quite
intelligent, imaginative, and above all, dramatic. She finally ran a telephone
service from her bed, with my help. When I was in grade school she took
creative writing courses by proxy, sending me to nighttime adult writing
courses where I took notes for her and she did the assignments. I
mention all this now simply to make the point that my early life, like most of
my readers', had its share of family misunderstandings and its own challenges. It
also had its own unique advantages. Our neighborhood bristled with vitality,
and I used to sit on the porch steps and observe it all, and write my poetry
when my chores were done. And listen. I felt even then that I had some direct
connection with the universe. When I wrote poetry, the universe seemed to talk
to me. Sometimes I talked back, and on rare occasions we spoke at once. There
were even some cultural advantages that I quite took as my right at the time.
These came along with rich doses of dogma from the priests, sent by our local
Catholic church to be my "spiritual" fathers, and to compensate for
my not having a male parent right at hand. As
I grew older the priests became younger, leading to some situations that in
retrospect seemed rather hilarious if unfortunate enough; then, they really
shattered my idealism in certain areas. But, no matter. On the other side of
that slippery ledger, the priests were highly educated men for the times. They
introduced me to "good music," books, and philosophy. One old Irish
priest read to us from a book of English poetry every Sunday afternoon for
years. By the time I was in my middle teens though, the church and my poetry
parted company when the priests objected to the ideas I was beginning to
express. Where my poetry goes, I follow--so as I've written elsewhere, it was
goodbye to the Catholic Church and as far as I was concerned to conventional
Christianity as well. Some
of my ideas certainly came from my mother's father. She and he had a family
argument and didn't see each other for twenty years, though we all lived in the
same town. Mother wouldn't let my grandfather in the house. She let me visit
him though. He was part Indian and part French, a tiny, dark-haired man with an
Indian hooked nose; tight-lipped and stubborn. But he talked to me about the
spirits of the fire and the wind, and took me for long walks in a nearby woods,
while he told me Indian legends. After
winning an
"honorary mention" {P. 43.} in a national poetry contest, Jane was
granted a scholarship to Skidmore college in Saratoga Springs, New York,
"on the other side of town". {P.
43-44.} The scholarship didn't begin to pay expenses, of course, so I worked a
series of jobs all through college--writing for the local newspaper, for the
college itself, and anywhere I could during the summers. The
entire world seemed to open up for me. My writing brought me to the attention
of a then well-known writer, Caroline Slade, who published in the national
women's magazines and had a best-selling novel besides. Caroline introduced me
at Yaddo, the famous writers' colony, which also happened to be in Saratoga (or
rather on its outskirts)…. In
college, I did well in subjects I liked, poorly in those I disliked, was
president of the Day Students' Council, contributed to the school literary
magazine, went wild reading a popular book on Einstein's theories, and very nearly
flunked biology twice--I couldn't, wouldn't dissect the frog. I'd already been
fairly well grounded in American and English poetry, and now I fell headlong
into the world of philosophy and became much more aware of fiction and the
novel. I
never daydreamed about being a mother, or even about being married in
conventional terms. Sometimes I saw myself living in Greenwich Village, in New
York City, as a proud and poor poet. Sometimes I saw myself as a college
English teacher, spending my nights writing poetry until dawn. And I still like
to write nights…. P.
46.} As I thought about the past though, it was obvious that my experiences had
stimulated me to ask questions I might not have asked otherwise--questions that
were to lead me to seek a greater framework. And as I wrote this chapter, I
began to see more clearly how I'd come to encourage impulses that led to
writing and curtail those that led in any other direction. Still, I didn't feel
as impatient with myself as I had earlier. I even thought, with a grin,
"You've come a long way, baby!" Returning
to Dreams,
"Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, {P. 77.}, Rob continues: In
physical terms, then, I think it quite possible that in Jane's case long-term
stress, beginning in her early childhood, consistently overstimulated her
immune system. Over and over Marie told Jane that she was no good, that the
daughter's birth had caused the mother's illness. Well before she was 10 years
old Jane had developed persistent symptoms of colitis, an inflammation of the
large intestine/bowel that is often associated with emotional stress. By her
early teens she had an overactive thyroid gland. Marie--and others--told her
that she would burn herself out and die before she was 20 years old. Her vision
was poor; she required very strong glasses (which she seldom wore). Finally in
her mid-30s there came the beginning of rheumatoid arthritis: Jane's immune
system greatly increased its attack on her body…. Speculating
upon the roles family members may have played in Jane's life regarding her
creativity and illness {P. 77-79.}, Rob goes on to say: …There
are as many possibilities--and probabilities--as one can think of. I can hardly
begin to list them all here. In Framework 2 (Rob's reference to Inner
Consciousness or the larger reality of possible and probable events from which
physical reality emerges each moment), for example, Marie, pregnant with
Jane, could have decided with her daughter-to-be upon certain sequences of
action to be pursued during their lives. Or in Framework 2 the two of them
could have cooperated upon such a decision before Marie's birth, even.
If reincarnation is to be considered, their disturbed relationship this time
might reflect past connections of a different yet analogous nature, and may
also have important effects upon any future ones. Additionally, Jane could have
chosen the present relationship to eventually help her temper reception of and
reaction to the Seth material, making her extra-cautious; this, even though
she'd seen to it ahead of time that she would be born with that certain
combination of fortitude and innocence necessary for her to press on with her
chosen abilities. She could have made a pact ahead of time to
"borrow" certain mystical qualities from her maternal grandfather,
who was part French Canadian and part Canadian Indian (specific tribe unknown
by us), and with whom she strongly identified as a child. And Jane's resolve,
her will that, according to Seth, "is amazingly strong" (in Volume 2
of "Unknown" Reality, see the 713th session for October 21,
1974), may buttress the understanding and determination of one or more of her
counterparts in this life; she may meet (or have met) such an individual;
another may live across an ocean, say, with no meeting ever to take place in
physical terms. In
all of this I've barely hinted at the complicated relationships involving other
family members from the past, present, and future. The mathematical
combinations possible are vast. And what's my role in all of this, for
heaven's sake (to make a pun)? Or that of members of my own family? What part
do I play, and have yet to play, in Jane's redemption*--as well as my own--and
on what level or levels? When did the two of us make our own pacts in Framework
2 (or other frameworks), and how will they work out in Framework 1 (Earth or
material reality). But it's even possible that all together Marie, Jane,
her grandfather, and I set up the original situation before the physical births
of any of us--and in some probable reality (if not this one) we did do
just that! Words become terribly inadequate tools to express what I feel and am
trying to write here, for I want to record at once every combination of
relationships I can conceive of…. Whatever
the initial course of action agreed to in just this probable reality by
everyone involved, from whatever point in the "past," in Framework 1
the participants have subjected it to an almost infinite variety of choices and
modifications through the years: but always--always--within nature's great
structure, and accompanied by the utter freedom of each person concerned to
accept, reject, abort, or change the whole affair from their individual
perspective at any moment…. To
return to just Jane and Marie, then, I think that their long-range cyclical
behavior and interaction, no matter how painful it may seem on the surface,
represented deep challenges set up by mother and daughter for certain overall
purposes that they wanted to experience, separately and jointly. Not only would
the two women be emotionally tested and enriched across physical and
psychological time, but so would their entities or whole selves.
*
Rob on redemption: {P.54-55.} ...I still implicitly believe the quotation Seth gave on
April 16, 1981, over a year ago now: "In that larger picture there
are no errors, for each action, pleasant or not, will in its fashion be
redeemed, both in relation to itself and ...to a larger picture that the
conscious mind may not be able presently to perceive." I'm
certainly not writing here about the idea of redemption in the ordinary
religious sense, although I think it's perfectly possible that in some other
frameworks, larger than our taken-for-granted physical and psychological one,
the idea of redemption--of understanding and embracing--may be involved
in a "religious" sense, as part of an intuitive grasp of All That Is. Since
I'm so closely related to Jane in this life, through marriage, as well as
through at least several reincarnational and counterpart roles (according to
Seth and our own feelings), I'm as deeply involved in this search for
redemption as she is. Given our present ideas about the limitless nature of
consciousness, we think our joint quest has been underway since before our
births--by choice--and we expect it to continue for the rest of our
physical lives. I don't mean that physical or psychic healings, for example,
can't or won't take place "this time around," but that if they do happen
they too will be deeply connected with those overall, much broader patterns of
our lives. To me, redemption means a continuous search or journey, then,
involving whatever events and interchanges we choose to create, for whatever
purposes along the way--and truly, I think, some of those purposes will involve
things "the conscious mind may not be able presently to perceive."
That we believe such things speaks for our own brands of faith, then, and also
signifies that Jane and I think we have much to learn. And we try to keep in
our minds Seth's statement that "your intellect does not have to
know the answers to all of your questions."
{P.
90-92.} So, although I think that Jane has made some "remarkable
gains" during recent weeks, I also think that basically she has yet to
resolve the entire issue of her illnesses--or even whether to continue life.
Seth put it beautifully a couple of months ago in the session for April 12--the
first time Jane spoke for him since leaving the hospital--and I return to it
again and again. See the essay for April 16: "The entire issue (of
Jane's living) had been going on for some time, and the argument--the
argument being somewhat in the nature of a soul facing its own legislature, or
perhaps standing as a jury before itself, setting its own case in a kind of
private yet public psychic trial. Life decisions are often made in just such a
fashion. With Ruburt they carried a psychic and physical logic and
economy…." Obviously,
Jane's deliberations over whether to continue physical life are much easier to appreciate
when she's depressed and/or physically uncomfortable, and during those times I
can sense the fluctuations in her examination of her psyche. Portions of her
are still quite deliberately thinking it all over, I'm sure, although she
doesn't mention this outside the session frameworks she provides for Seth and
herself. "I
probably didn't want to write any more," she dictated in her own session
for May 27. "I feared I'd lost all inspiration--that 20 years of answers
weren't enough, and that perhaps my life had no place to go if that were the
case…." At
my age (63), then, I'm learning once again that I can't live Jane's life for
her, or protect her from the motivations of her own physical and psychic
explorations and choices, no matter how much I may want to. Nor could
she do that for me. On many levels that kind of psychic interference is quite
simply ignored by the individual in question, and rightly so. Jane's
determination would see to her own protection in any case. And her innate
mystical nature must fully know and accept that the time, manner, and method of
her physical death, whenever it occurs, is as much a part of her body's
life as its life is. I deeply believe that her psyche would insist that she
doesn't need any sort of basic protection by me (or anyone else) to begin
with--only understanding. I live daily with the proposition that my wife is in
the process of making profound
decisions, and that once she's made them she'll respond accordingly both
physically and mentally. In
that sense Jane's whole self or entity accepts her actions completely, as part
of the learning process available to "it" through her
individuality--nor do I mean it does so in any passive or remote sense at all,
but in the most intimate, sensitive terms possible, and also, probably, in ways
we cannot appreciate now. At that moment of joining with her whole self,
whenever her "death" does take place, all will be resolved with the
finest creativity and understanding, for I believe that Jane herself will
certainly continue "living" as an individual. I
also believe that these kinds of challenges--involving decisions about whether
to continue physical life--have always existed for every creature on earth
(just as they have for the earth itself as a living entity). Jane and I have no
idea of how our personal story is going to work out, but we do want to tell it. Apropos
of the material I've been covering in these pages, I want to close this essay
with quotations from two sessions that I've always thought were among the best
Seth has given. These sessions still live, and in them he reinforces the idea
that each of us does create our own reality. Both can be found in Chapter 1 of The
Individual and the Nature of Personal Reality, A Seth Book. From
Session 610 for June 7, 1972: "You always know what you are doing, even
when you do not realize it. Your eye knows it sees, though it cannot see itself
except through the use of reflection. In the same way the world as you see it
is a reflection of what you are, a reflection not in glass but in
three-dimensional reality. You project your thoughts, feelings, and
expectations outward, then you perceive them as the outside reality. When it
seems to you that others are observing you, you are observing yourself from the
standpoint of your own projections." And from Session 613 for September 11, 1972: "Interactions with others do occur, of course, yet there are none that you do not accept or draw to you by your thoughts, attitudes, or emotions. This applies in each area of your life. In your terms, it applies both before life and after it. In the most miraculous fashion you are given the gift of creating your experience."
After Thoughts What role do we play in shaping each other's lives and experiences. For example, My wife, Sandra, brings me the right book or says the right thing when I need it. My son, Evan, does something to motivate me when I need that, too, etc. Expanding this point of view further, I wonder if Jane could have set up her relatively early demise (54) as a highly probable, or possible, event before life? In choosing her parents, she chose certain genetic and psychological predispositions (see notes from Jane and Rob's book Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, Volume I). Did she realize ahead of time (before life) that if and when she started to deliver this material, there would be no practical way to stop? Would illness and her early demise also protect her from the demands and expectations of a demanding public? Would illness serve as a graceful way to bow out of a lifetime that for too long would be occupied with intense creative effort? These are all great questions that apply to all of us. We all have our own thoughts and inclinations that determine how and when we die. (See: Rebecca Writes Her Own Last Chapter)
Help map the
contours of the soul! If you like this article, share it with friends on and off the Internet. If you want to read more, go to: http://www.realtalklibrary.com. Do you have any important life stories you'd like to share? Have them published in the Real Talk Library! By sharing meaningful subjective experiences, we can expand our definitions of who we are and what reality is. Eventually, we will remember that we create our own reality, we are both one and separate, and there is enough of everything to go around if we share. Only then, will we stop exploiting one another and end the cycle of conflict and violence we now create in the world. Please join us in this marvelous adventure of self-exploration and evolution by sharing your own personal experiences. E-mail your stories to: Copyright © 1999, Roger A. "Pete" Peterson.
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