DREAMS, EVOLUTION, AND VALUE FULFILLMENT (PDF)

DREAMS, "EVOLUTION", AND VALUE FULFILLMENT VOLUME I  BOOKS BY JANE ROBERTS How to Develop Your ESP Power • 1966 The Seth Material • 1970 Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul • 1972 The Education of Oversoul Seven • 1973 The Nature of Personal Reality (A SETH BOOK) • 1974 Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology 1975 Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time • 1975 Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book • 1976 The "Unknown" Reality (A SETH BOOK, TWO VOLUMES) • 1977-1979 The World View of Paul Cezanne: A Psychic Interpretation • 1977 The After Death Journal of an American Philosopher: The World View of William James • 1978 The Further Education of Oversoul Seven • 1979 Emir's Education in the Proper Use of Magical Powers • 1979 The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression (A SETH BOOK) • 1979 The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events (A SETH BOOK) • 1981 The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto • 1981 If We Live Again: Or, Public Magic and Private Love • 1982 Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time • 1984  A SETH BOOK DREAMS, "EVOLUTION", AND VALUE FULFILLMENT VOLUME I Jane Roberts Introductory Essays and Notes by Robert F. Butts PRENTICE HALL PRESS • NEW YORK  Copyright © 1986 by Jane Roberts All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Published by Prentice Hall Press A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Gulf + Western Building One Gulf + Western Plaza New York, NY 10023 PRENTICE HALL PRESS is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Roberts, Jane, 1929-1984 Dreams, "evolution," and value fulfillment. Includes index. 1. Spirit writings. 2. Reincarnation. I. Title. BF1301.R589 1986 133.9'3 86-507 ISBN 0-13- 219452-X Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2  This book is dedicated to my husband, Robert F. Butts, for his love and devotion.  Contents Quotations from Seth 9 A Poem and Commentary by Jane Roberts 11 Introductory Essays by Robert F. Butts 13 Preface by Seth 95 Chapter 1 Before the Beginning 119 Chapter 2 In the Beginning 137 Chapter 3 Sleepwalkers. The World in Early Trance. The Awakening of the Species 166 Chapter 4 The Ancient Dreamers 192 Chapter 5 The "Garden of Eden." Man "Loses" His Dream Body and Gains a "Soul" 224 Chapter 6 Genetic Heritage and Reincarnational Predilections 259 Index 286  Quotations from Seth (A note by R.F.B.: The following quotations are from sessions Jane delivered for her trance personality, Seth, just before and during the time she worked with him on Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment. One is from a private session, two are from "nonbook" regular sessions, and one is from Dreams itself.) "Science has unfortunately bound up the minds of its own even most original thinkers, for they dare not stray from certain scientific principles. All energy contains consciousness (underlined). That one sentence is basically scientific heresy, and in many circles it is religious heresy as well. A recognition of that simple statement would indeed change your world." —FROM A PRIVATE SESSION, JULY 12, 1979 "I feel sometimes as if I am expected to justify life's conditions, when of course they do not need any such justification." —FROM SESSION 896, JANUARY 16, 1980 ". . . basically, consciousness has nothing to do with size. If that were the case, it would take more than a world-sized globe to contain the consciousness of simply one cell" —FROM SESSION 917, MAY 21, 1980, IN CHAPTER 8 OF DREAMS "It is a gift, a boon, an exquisite pleasure, to become physically alive on your functioning planet, couched securely within your dusk and dawn, your existence supported by the seasons and by an overall operation of spontaneous order." —FROM SESSION 929, NOVEMBER 26, 1980  A Poem and Commentary by Jane Roberts (Jane experienced many painful physical and psychological delays while producing Dreams. Finally, she had only six sessions to go for the book when she came through with this material for herself:) "On Friday, October 23, 1981, I received the following message from Seth: 'Attend to what is directly before you. You have no responsibility to save the world or find the solutions to all problems—but to attend to your particular personal corner of the universe. As each person does that, the world saves itself.' "The same day I wrote: Dawn is breaking. Why should I lie in bed worrying about my body or the world? Before time was recorded dawn has followed dusk and all the creatures of the earth have been couched in the loving context of their times. "After writing the above poem I felt a sense of faith—and realized that like many I'd become afraid of faith itself. It was a fear hidden in my deepest aspects. . . ."  Introductory Essays by Robert F. Butts August 12, 1982. Originally I'd planned to write the standard kind of introduction for Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment. However, as I became involved in describing the complicated, emotionally charged series of events surrounding the hospitalization earlier this year of my wife, Jane Roberts, the material automatically began organizing itself into a series of dated essays. I was more than happy to follow this intuition from my creative self, for it answered many questions I'd started to consciously worry about. We could have presented Dreams as is, or at least have avoided mentioning certain less-than-advantageous circumstances surrounding its production by Jane and by Seth, the "energy personality essence" she speaks for while in a trance or dissociated state. The facts are, though, that Jane's already impaired physical condition grew steadily worse while she was working on the book. Shortly after finishing it, she went into the hospital. Since we've always wanted to make sure that our "psychic work" is given within the context of our daily living, I've undertaken to present in these essays intensely personal material relevant to the creation of Dreams. (The mechanics of Jane's still- fascinating trance phenomenon have been described in some detail in the six previous Seth books she's produced—with my help—and they'll also be referred to, if briefly, in Dreams.) I worked on the essays in succession, just as they're given here, although I found myself adding to the earlier ones as I moved into the later ones. In terms of length alone, it soon became 13  14 Jane Roberts obviously impossible to write all of the material for any piece on the date given. Even by going back over them, however, I couldn't discuss everything I wanted to: The essays could have easily grown into a book of their own. This weaving things together to make them "fit" is only natural for one of my temperament, but I didn't alter any of my original copy—that I'd have refused to do—and I kept intact those first spontaneous descriptions of the events attendant to Jane's physical difficulties, as well as our deep-seated, sometimes wrenching feelings connected to them. I did not look at Seth-Jane's Dreams itself while writing the essays, in order to avoid having them overly influenced by work in the book. Instead, we want all of this preliminary material to show how we live daily—regardless of how well we may or may not do —with a generalized knowledge of, and belief in, the Seth material. Seth, then, has finished his work on Dreams. I wrote the original version of the notes for each book session as he delivered it through Jane, and also began collecting other notes and reference material that might be used. Since I've completed the essays, all I have to do now is "refine" the session notes (and addenda) as I type the finished manuscript. Jane will help as much as she can. We expect to have the book ready for our editors, Tarn Mossman and Lynne Lumsden, by the end of the year. Jane appreciates that the dates I'm always giving merely furnish a convenient framework for our material, but she's hardly enamored of such precise methodology; she understands that it's my way of doing things, realizes it's very useful, and goes on from there. I use a similar system in presenting all of the published Seth material. It has the great attribute of allowing for quick reference timewise (if not always by subject matter) to any of the more than 1,500 regular, private or deleted, and "ESP class" sessions Jane has given over the past 19 years—until July 1982, that is, when I began work on these passages. Moreover, the choice of presenting the material in essay form proved to have one virtue that was more valuable than all the others combined: It allowed us to delve into the events I describe, and "our deep-seated, sometimes wrenching feelings connected to them," a little bit at a time. Those situations might have been too devastating for us otherwise, too emotionally  Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment 15 threatening, too charged for us to present them with at least the minimum amount of objectivity required by the written word. Many of the events and feelings evoked such deep implications of trial and challenge for Jane and me that we were often left with strong feelings of unreality: This can't be happening to us. At our ages (52 and 62, Jane and I, respectively), why have we created lives with such nightmarish connotations? Why do I have to leave my dear wife alone in the hospital each night, so that I feel like crying for her when I go to bed by myself in the hill house? Why can't we be left alone to live lives of peace and creativity? And how many millions and millions of times through the ages have other human beings on this planet felt the same way—and will yet? Why are our lives ending like this, when we feel that simply getting through each day is an accomplishment? That basic impetus toward survival came to take precedence over everything else. Indeed, for several weeks following the initiation of the challenges I relate in the essays, supposedly creative activities like writing books and painting pictures often faded into insignificance by comparison. And for me, Jane's condition came to stand for everything we don't know in our particular joint, chosen, probable earthly reality. Yet, Jane and I were being creative with it all—the whole time —and moving several stages closer to understanding All That Is in the process. If we were often badly frightened, we also felt surges of grim elation (when we allowed them to surface) that we were survivors. We'd chosen the entire experience, which is still continuing, of course. "You make your own reality," Seth has told us innumerable times. We agree —and that is where Jane and I diverge most sharply from the conventional establishment belief that events happen to people, instead of being created by them. The essay form gave us chances for at least a minimal study of the various forms our creative learning experiences have taken to date. We quickly agreed that we'd been setting up the illness syndrome for years, yet the deep emotional shocks accompanying its physical developments seemed to come at us like attacking dark birds zooming in from another probable reality. We learned. We adjusted in ways that a few weeks previously would have seemed unbelievable to us—and, ironically, as must often happen in such situations, once we'd moved into our new  16 Jane Roberts joint reality, it appeared that those particular challenges had always been incipient for us. The essays contain many insights into the meanings the whole experience with illness has had for us, and will continue to have for many years. Our lives have been irrevocably changed—by choice—and not for the worse, either. Jane and I used our wills to intensify our focuses in certain areas. And I'm sure that as the reader works his or her way through the essays, it will become quite apparent that I wrote them just as much for Jane and me as I did for others—all in our ceaseless attempts to better understand, to grasp a bit more firmly, those mental and physical adventures that we're trying to delve into "this time around." ESSAY 1__________________________________________________ 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, 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  Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment 17 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. As the days passed Jane kept putting me off about doing the translation, until finally I grew resentful and despairing at her refusal to cooperate. I decided to write around that one great line as best I could. For by then I knew that she had no intention of producing an English version: Some childlike and naive, yet deeply stubborn portion of her psyche, some "perverse area," as Seth, her trance personality, jokingly characterized it long ago, had simply taken over and decided not to do any more on that subject. For its own reasons it didn't want to, and that was it. I'd seen Jane operate in that fashion before, and I knew she'd have her way. Lest I give an inaccurate picture of my wife, however, let me add that she combines instances of that seeming intransigence with a profound intuitive innocence before nature (and thus All That Is), and with a great literal acceptance of nature's manifestations and of her own being and creations within that framework. Although she's not entirely in agreement with me on this point, I think that essentially Jane is a mystic —not an easy thing to be in our extroverted, materialistic society, for it represents a way of life that's little understood these days. It's a role she's chosen for many reasons. Mysticism is still overwhelmingly re- garded as a profoundly religious expression, and one that's hardly practical, but in my opinion neither of those situations applies to Jane. Her "mystical way" is reinforced by a strongly secretive characteristic that's usually belied by her seemingly outgoing character and behavior. It took me a long time to realize this. I also had to learn that her literal cast of mind grows di-  18 Jane Roberts rectly out of her mysticism, and that because it does, she can be quite impulsive. There's nothing halfway about Jane. She's intensely loyal. She's a very perceptive person with many abilities, a fine intelligence, and an excellent critical sense. Whatever reservations she shows—her conscious inhibition of impulses, for example—are learned devices that are literally protective in nature. I've certainly found her particular combination of attributes to be unique, and I don't think she'd be able to express the Seth material as she does without them. Throughout these essays I hope to add many insights into her character. For now, though, I present what I have to work with from the saddest, most mournful Sumari song she's ever created and sung. The tape goes into our files, although I'd love to know what she said on the rest of it. . . . In the meantime, two days after I discovered the tape, I asked Jane, "Do you want to have a session tonight?" At first she didn't know. The question followed the little talk we'd had after supper. My back hurt somewhat. I'd finally decided that the ache wasn't because I'd been lifting her physically —all 82 pounds of her— but because of the medical bills we'd received today. (That had been my somewhat amused speculation to begin writh.) We've gotten a Hurry—a small blizzard—of bills from doctors during the last few days. Jane has been home from the hospital since last Sunday, March 28. She spent 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. Several of the ulcers had been incipient for a number of months, although neither of us had realized what those circles of reddening flesh meant as they slowly blossomed on the "pressure points" of her buttocks, coccyx, and right shoulder blade. Decubitus ulcers: one of the first terms we'd added to our rapidly growing medical vocabulary—and one of the more stubborn afflictions for a human being to get rid of once they've become established. Even now not all of Jane's decubiti have fully healed, although several of them have closed up nicely. I should note, by the way, that her bedsores weren't infected when she went into the hospital, but were less than a week later. How come? "It's staph," several of the nurses told us. A sign  Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment 19 warning of infection was put on the door of 3B9, Jane's room, and stayed there until she went home. "If the infection in that ulcer on your coccyx reaches the bone, it means at least a six-week stay in the hospital," exclaimed Jane's principal doctor, Rita Mandali (not her real name). Twice-daily treatments with hydrogen peroxide and a sulfadiazine cream were started. And I began to read up on how many kinds of staphylococcus bacteria alone there are, and indeed how common infections are in hospitals, since by their very nature those institutions are far from being the cleanest in town. . . . Jane's hearing is much improved after treatment with decongestants and a pair of minor operations in which tiny drainage tubes were inserted through her eardrums—the procedure is called surery—to relieve internal blockage. Jane's thyroid gland, Dr. Mandali finally told her, has simply ceased functioning, so the doctor has begun a program of cautiously rejuvenating my wife's endocrine system, and thus all of her bodily processes, with a synthetic thyroid hormone in pill form (a low 50 micrograms to start). Jane is to take these pills for the rest of her life. At least that's the current prognosis. Her double vision is not as severe and is supposed to keep improving as the hormone takes effect. Dr. Mandali has prescribed drops to keep Jane's eyes lubricated, and a liquid salicylate medication (as a substitute for aspirin) to control joint pain and inflammation. Both of these products are taken four times a day. The increased glandular activity is also expected to have some beneficial effects upon Jane's arthritis, and possibly upon her anemia (a condition that often accompanies arthritis). I asked that she be tested for food allergies, since I'd read that reactions to various foods and addi- tives can trigger arthritis, but Dr. Mandali said that "if Jane is allergic she (Jane) would know it"—a position I came to most thoroughly disagree with. But usually, I thought, the trouble with having something diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis is that not only do you have it when you go into the hospital, but when you leave it. Such is the state of the art of medicine in this case, unfortunately. Because of her much-reduced thyroid activity, Jane often dozes or even sleeps in her chair. She'd very gradually started doing this before entering the hospital, but any physical causes behind her behavior had been unsuspected by us then. I only