The "Introduction" and "Key Points" of this chapter were summarized by an AI editor based on the main text below; they are not things Mike said during the lecture. The main text comes from Mike's commentary, and the block quotes are Seth's original words (the parts Mike read aloud).
Introduction
Session 941 is the final session of this book. Seth summarizes the core of the entire book: evolution is merely an old belief that should be discarded; the inner psychological universe is driven by value fulfillment, love, and desire, and is the source of life and thought; human beings have always existed in a state of natural grace, and nature has always been supernatural. This session also records Rob and Jane's astonishment and sense of loss after the book was completed, as well as the subsequent events of Jane being hospitalized and the material being deposited in the Yale University Library.
Key Points of This Chapter
- Evolution is merely an old belief, an outdated myth that should be discarded.
- The inner psychological universe is a gestalt of psyche, driven by value fulfillment, love, and desire.
- Human beings have always existed in a state of natural grace, lively and proactive, and need not be taught how to live.
- Nature has always been supernatural.
- After the book was completed, Jane was hospitalized, and Rob recorded the aftermath in essays; the original materials were transferred to the Yale University Library.
Main Text
This Is the Most Ambitious Session in the Book
Today is Session 941 of Volume 2 of Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, and it is also the final session of the entire book. This session began on Monday evening, February 8, 1982, at 9:01 p.m.1
Right at the start, Rob said that this afternoon he and Jane had worked out an outline of affirmations, hoping she could follow them and return to the productive efforts she loved so much—such as writing, composing poetry, painting, teaching classes, answering letters (they still received thirty to fifty letters every week), as well as cooking and feeding the cats. After dinner, Rob wrote down a version of these affirmations, emphasizing Jane's ability to write prose and handle correspondence. Whether that statement had any beneficial effect on Jane, Rob had no way of knowing.
In this final session of the book, Seth continues speaking to the you that encompasses everything.
Seth said:
You live in a world in which you believe you must struggle in order to survive, and so you struggle without cease. You believe that the natural features of nature are somehow hostile to your own existence, so that if left alone in nature's hands, you would be lost. Within the very framework of your minds, you have believed this, and so in your experience, all of these things have largely been confirmed.
He said you fear nature because that is what you believe, and so in your experience, in the evidence and stories you hear, everything tells you that being out in nature is dangerous for human beings.
Then Seth said something very important:
I have nothing to teach you. You are creatures.
In other words, the fact that you are creatures is entirely natural. No one teaches you how to live, how to walk, how to eat, how to obtain things, how to drink water—all of this you learn naturally on your own. You are part of nature; you are born that way. So why do you still always ask: no one ever taught me, so how come I don't know how to live? You don't need anyone to teach you.
I have been trying to lead you to a new threshold of perception, where the old myth of evolution can be seen as an outdated, ancient, or abandoned castle in a forest of beliefs—a forest that is itself truly magically formed.
He said he has been trying to lead you to a new threshold of perception. At that new threshold of perception, what you call evolution—from single-celled organisms to multicellular organisms, and then to higher intelligent beings—this old idea, this old myth of evolution, is seen as an ancient, outdated belief within the forest of beliefs that should be abandoned. He emphasizes once again: there is no such thing as evolution.
He paused for a long time, then said:
That forest—that forest of beliefs—within the forest of beliefs, the belief in evolution is very old and should be abandoned. Within that forest of beliefs is the world of your imagination, indeed the imagination of your minds, but it is given power by the natural creativity that rises up from an inner world. In the inner world, far more real representations exist of the ideas of individuals and beasts.
He said that within your jungle of beliefs, there are countless beliefs, beyond number, just like a forest. Where do these beliefs come from? They are the world of your imagination. When we ordinarily exercise our imagination, thinking about this and that, it is always supported by certain beliefs. And what supports those beliefs themselves? They are given power by the inner, innate creativity. This inner world truly represents the ideas of individuals and beasts—humans and animals are different beliefs, different concepts, but they are all born from the same source. The source of your thoughts is also the source of this physical world, and also the source of this universe; they are one source. This is what he wants to tell you.
This world has largely been obscured by the disguises brought by scientists and religion, but in your era, that landscape has begun to appear so dark and dangerous to your own desires, so taboo and strange, that the results seem all the more inevitable and swift.
Within your jungle of beliefs, its source is the source of your life, the source of your entire universe, yet you fear that source. You think there is danger within it, and many taboos, and you feel it is very strange. Because of this feeling of yours, it leads to consequences in which that taboo, strangeness, and threat seem to be real.
In this book, I hope I have given you a far more magnificent, true picture.
You see, you think the things at your foundation are all shadowy, dark, and frightening, just as you dare not stay in a great forest because you feel the great forest is terrifying, dangerous, and unpredictable. But he says, in this book he has given you a far more magnificent, true picture.
They represent the source of the structure of your lives, your existence, and your thoughts.
What does this book talk about? It talks about the source of your lives, the source of your structure, the source of your existence and thoughts, the source of our entire universe.
The inner world of reality, the world of dreams, represents a model of existence in which new energy, vitality, and new existence are everywhere apparent, ready to come forward and form new transformations, new combinations of energy and desire.
This session is his summary of the entire book. You can look at his summary:
That inner psychological universe is a gestalt of psyche, formed, maintained, and driven by value fulfillment, love, and desire, by the value of love without limit.
How is that inner psychological universe of yours formed? It is driven, formed, maintained, and impelled by value fulfillment, by love, by desire, by the value of love without limit. In this way you understand how your inner being is formed.
That universe will not give up on itself or on any of its creatures. It is governed by a different set of principles, a different set of values, and by an inner cooperative abundance.
He says this inner world of yours is different from the outer world you understand. It has its own principles and its own laws, different from the outer world. This book is about exactly this—the source of our universe, that inner world, and the basic patterns of its existence, its attributes, its characteristics.
He stopped for a minute:
You may need some time before the old beliefs become less prominent and finally fall into their proper decay.
When the old beliefs begin to collapse, when they begin to decay, you still need some time; they will not disappear all at once.
Incidentally, that decay does have its own stately energy and beauty.
The collapse and disappearance of old beliefs—this process itself has its own stately energy and beauty. You can see the process by which old beliefs are replaced by new beliefs and gradually exit the stage; that too is a kind of beauty, a kind of stateliness, a kind of energy.
But now, within the realm of your existence, all of consciousness's natural inclinations yearn for constructive change, for clearer vision, to experience once again the spirituality of their flesh, the innate sense of grace of depth and heart.
Now we have arrived at a point in time where all consciousness has an inner inclination, an inclination toward natural, constructive change. Because the old beliefs cannot bring you clear vision; they are vague, hazy, and often disguised. And then, "experience once again"—why does he say "once again"? Because we have already experienced it once before in our own way, with the same body, the same life experiences, except that now your beliefs are different, and so your experiences and feelings are different. When you have new cognitive beliefs, you will experience once again the spirituality of your flesh, the innate sense of grace of body and mind.
They want to feel once again the effortless activity of their birthright.
Why say "once again"? Because we once had this ability, and it was only later, after rational analysis and rational thought emerged, that this ability was gradually stripped away. When you find this ability again, it is not that we humans never had it—we humans did have it once.
Next came his closing words, spoken with even greater fervor:
This book has, to some extent, put each of you in touch with the activity of your own inner psyche, your creative breath, so that you have been refreshed, and in your own minds and spirits feel new hope, new intent, and the joy of worldly and spiritual power.
These few sentences are all very important. He says your breath itself is creative—every breath may create a new world and a new universe. So you are refreshed; every breath brings you strength and brings you energy. And in your own minds and spirits you feel new hope, new intent, and at the same time the joy of both worldly and spiritual power.
Here he deliberately adds "worldly." Why emphasize the worldly? In the previous sessions he has already emphasized this: he fears that people will lean too one-sidedly toward pursuing spiritual things and treat the worldly as something vulgar.
You are in a state of natural grace, which is quite lively and active. You have always been in this state, whether or not science declares that consciousness possesses its own intent.
What is important? What is important is that you have always dwelt in a state of grace; you have always been lively and active. Active means spontaneous—we humans all develop in spontaneity; lively means our state of mind is exuberant and joyful.
Finally, he added this one sentence as a summary:
Of course, nature has always been supernatural.
What he means is: nature is not the kind of "natural" you imagine, or that scientists perceive, or that you ordinarily understand. Nature has spirituality; it has consciousness; it is one with us, merged with us.
Then he said cheerfully: End of chapter, end of session, end of book. And with that, this book came to an end.
Rob and Jane's Reactions
What follows is a discussion about themselves; the main text has ended. Seth said:
Back to your own discussion, they have been very useful to you, because on your part they have helped with clear communication.
He said that the sessions on the magical approach, to the extent that you understand them and put them into practice, do indeed represent the most natural truths concerning the nature and structure of your world.
I will continue with a schedule of sessions suited to your wishes, needs, and purposes.
Afterward Rob said thank you, and the session ended. At 9:37, after coming out of trance, he and Jane just stared at each other. Because they had not expected the session to finally end like this.
They were dazed because the book was finally finished. But why did they feel sad? Finishing a book should be exciting, yet they were sad. Even though at the end of last Wednesday night's session Jane had already predicted that the book was about to end, its actual completion still left them stunned.
Rob said he congratulated Jane, telling her that she had created another good book that would help many people. But all their reactions were far more subdued than when Jane had previously finished a book on her own or with Seth — very calm, staring blankly.
No matter what other challenges they had created for themselves over the past two years and four months, knowing that this book was in progress had always been a comforting foundation in their lives: as long as the book was being written, Jane would not have any major problems. And even during the long delays in its production, that was also true; they did not worry. But now the book was finished, and without the book as support, their lives had lost a pillar. And they knew that as the creation of the book began to fade from their immediate feelings, other challenges would inevitably move forward.
Basically the matter had come down to this: they hoped that Jane could keep gathering herself day after day, and now that Seth and she had finished their book, their new creed would provide her with support.
After the Book Was Finished
This book has a follow-up, and the follow-up is quite long, roughly ten sessions. The follow-up records the living conditions of the two of them after the book was finished, and it also records many things Jane herself said -- because by that time Jane could no longer type or write, so Rob began recording some of the things Jane said. It contains both a record of their lives and some of Jane's own reflections.
Rob says that two and a half years earlier, Jane had already written the first 17 chapters of her third book -- The Oversoul Seven trilogy and the Museum of Time2 -- and then set it aside to begin writing Jane's God. Although he considered several times going back to write the sequel to The Oversoul Seven trilogy, he did not manage to do so. Recently, however, she talked about completing it, and Rob hopes she will.
But Rob cannot say the same thing about The Magical Approach. A year and a half earlier, after Seth began a group of excellent private sessions on that subject -- that is, Seth gave fourteen sessions on the magical approach, which were later collected and published separately, but at this point they had not yet organized The Magical Approach; they wanted to wait until Jane had finished organizing it and then publish it all together. Rob watched as Jane tried several times to write that book.
Last month, in the notes for Session 939, Rob finally expressed his belief that Jane would not complete that work. In other words, The Magical Approach had not yet been brought back to life by him. But clearly Jane had the freedom to pick up any project again, and she chose not to complete some of them.
Rob believes that The Magical Approach, as Jane planned it, would have been a good book, but it ended up being overturned by at least two major factors. The first was that Jane was too inhibited by the very subject that gave rise to the magical approach material -- the subject concerning her physical symptoms -- because she felt she had failed to heal her own body through what she had learned, and she felt inhibited. The second was this: because she chose to imitate the steps Rob used to organize the Seth books, she felt troubled. For all the Seth books were recorded by Rob, and Rob would assemble session after session into a book for publication in his own way, with notes, a preface, and a follow-up. Jane wanted to imitate Rob and do something similar -- she wanted to gather together the sessions Seth gave on the magical approach (the first 14 sessions, plus 25 more later) into a new book called The Magical Approach -- but the process itself was never completed.
In other words, she had no problem transmitting for Seth, but when it came to assembling the transmitted content into a book, she did not seem to be very good at it. Because when she wanted to reconstruct the book in a magical way, she was even more at a loss as to where to begin -- that approach did not allow her to create freely and charge ahead. The plan she originally had in mind was to make some structural rearrangements in each chapter, not following the traditional session-by-session format of the Seth books; because when speaking of the magical approach, if you were too rigid, she did not feel there was much point. But she also could not put her ideas into practice -- the ideas were too new, too jumpy, and she was also under the latent influence of Rob's books, so she did not know how to write it.
Rob says that in the notes for Session 939 he also wrote that he might eventually try to assemble such a book himself.
Even so, two days later, when Jane made rough final notes in her diary on February 10, she still had The Magical Approach on her mind. Jane said:
The fingers are still a troublesome problem, and I hope to eliminate it, partly using the new suggestive notes Rob typed for me, typing with my right hand, as far as I can try, even though that too could be used as a magical approach.
Rob added a note after this passage, written a month later: what Jane last wrote in her notes really was the last time. Because on February 26, eighteen days after this book ended, Jane was admitted to a local hospital -- for treatment of hearing problems, rheumatoid arthritis, and some other ailments.
Rob says that Jane's hospital experience has become so complex that he began to think of describing it -- whatever it might develop into -- as a series of chronological essays for this book, in place of the more traditional follow-up he had originally expected to write. He did indeed do this later, and it became ten essays.
For them, the shock was very great, and it is still continuing. Knowing nothing in advance, they knew they would need a great deal of time to understand and develop all the deeply moving and conflicting emotional, psychic, and intellectual events connected with it. The hospitalization itself was a very great shock to them, because the two of them never went to the hospital. This time Jane suddenly could not hear and only then went to the hospital; she had not wanted to go, but she could not hear, so she had no choice, and it happened to be convenient to have these other ailments examined and treated at the same time.
Jane stayed in this hospital for a month; this was her first hospitalization. During this month in the hospital, they experienced many, many interesting things, and it also expanded their understanding. You can imagine: these two people, from the time they married and began living together, had basically been in a closed state. Especially in the last dozen or so years, they basically never went out; they stayed home every day, either writing books or painting or transmitting the Seth material. They were in a state of semi-disconnection from society -- theoretically still connected, with publishers and with answering readers' letters, and occasionally friends would visit, but such connections were already very loose. But being hospitalized was different. Whether it is an American hospital or a Chinese hospital, the moment you enter a hospital, it is as if you step into the torrent of the whole of society, and you cannot avoid it even if you want to: the complexity of that place, the number of people, the noise, the richness of social events -- it is truly a panorama of human life. This matter was so fresh to the two of them, so impactful, and also so shocking.
Rob says:
Every day when I watched my lovely wife, after years of struggle, lying in her own hospital bed, I felt the surge of those events, and I saw them within Jane, and felt them within her.
When he saw Jane finally lying in the hospital bed, he could feel that these social events, the dealings and connections with people, were a very great shock to Jane. In the afterword he will write about how she underwent examinations, how she had CT scans, how she could not go to the toilet by herself, how three or four people helped her go to the toilet together -- she felt both shame and a kind of connection between people that she had never felt before, and in the end it all turned into a sense of humor. Think about it: she was, after all, a woman who valued her privacy greatly, who was extremely strong-willed, and who disliked dealing with people. Once in the hospital she could not take care of herself, and she had to rely entirely on the orderlies, nurses, and doctors around her, and she had to defecate in front of so many people -- you can imagine how she felt. But she had no choice but to accept all of this in the hospital.
In a manner of speaking, their shared world collapsed upon them on February 26. Because previously the two of them had lived together as a couple; now Jane was living in the hospital, and Rob was at home. In America there is basically no concept of staying with a patient; the hospital does not allow you to stay, nor does it need you to, because it has a complete nursing system. So Rob could only go see her during the day and had to come back at night. Their shared life together no longer existed.
Rob says:
Yet we continue to live within the turmoil of our beliefs, and in the notes for this book I have pointed out again and again how Jane and I are trying to understand the probable realities we have created.
He says beliefs create reality, so in the case of the hospital, how was this experience created? He says:
I tell myself that if I can write about the storms of consciousness involving an entire nation, I can obviously also describe and reflect upon the storms of our own consciousness.
This hospital business was for them a storm of consciousness, a shock.
Jane and I surely still have many incredible things to write, even though I think the more basic statement is that certain portions of each individual's reality are consciously unknowable. As Seth said three years ago: consciousness attempts to develop toward its own ideals, its ideal growth, but it also contributes to the ideal development of all the organizations in which it participates.
He says you cannot fully understand how your consciousness creates reality; certain parts are unknowable to you. Just as many people say about Rob and Jane: Jane hated hospitals the most, so how could she create a reality in which she herself went to the hospital? She was so sick she still would not go to the hospital, but in the end reality still made her experience it. There truly is a part of her consciousness that she herself does not know -- this is what Rob means to say.
So what are those ideal developments growing between Jane and Rob? He says Seth said that every consciousness develops toward its own ideal direction, and at the same time participates in the ideal developments of all those associated with it. Rob says:
The introverted question, for example, must intrigue Seth even more than it does us. His dealings with us, and especially with Jane, are as much a learning experience for him as they are for us.
Because Seth needs to cross realities to communicate with Jane. He says Seth relies on transmitting information through Jane's psyche, and Jane also relies on him for the information she receives from Seth, and then passes it on to Rob and others.
What landscapes of consciousness and regions of tranquility must he have traversed in order to help Jane as much as he has, as much as he has done.
For Seth and Jane to communicate, they must have traversed different spaces of consciousness in order to connect; this is a two-way process. He says that in this process, the landscapes of consciousness Seth traversed to transmit the material -- for Seth, those landscapes have tended to become non-physical, but on the contrary, they contain emotional intensity; for us, it is basically the same. He says this connection is an emotional intensity, not merely a connection across conscious distance, but more of an emotional connection.
Jane, from her mystical orientation and from what Seth provided, chose what she wanted to learn and use. Rob believes that if a person is not a mystic, then such a state of existence can only be understood approximately. Without someone with Jane's mystical nature, the Seth material could not have been understood as well as it is presented today. Clearly there are many possible variations, but the mystic chooses challenges that the rest of us can only understand in the vaguest of ways. For most ordinary people, those intuitions and inspirations are vague and indistinct, but mystics, represented by Jane, can receive them clearly. For example, with Seth's information, after only a brief period of familiarization and training -- roughly just a few sessions, after seven or eight sessions -- she was able to receive material from Seth in long passages; before that, she could only receive it letter by letter.
Rob says:
Jane's creation of the mystery of her universe is her own alone, and this has always been so, and will always be so. The same is true for every person -- you are all creating your own thoughts.
He has expressed her way again and again in that seemingly simple but actually not simple poem of hers, as well as in this session -- a way that is a source of creation Rob can only partially comprehend.
Now that Jane is lying ill in bed, Rob says their shared reality seems to him extremely difficult to understand, but I know that to Seth it appears far more transparent, and at this time I see him seeing our great, active potentials that we cannot see.
Rob is still quite depressed: their shared life has been destroyed, and Jane has gone to the hospital. Seth says that even under these circumstances, the two of them still have potentials, but Rob says I cannot see them, and I also cannot see why we had to experience this kind of thing -- this was not something we should have had to go through.
Jane had received hints from Seth, but she did not speak for him. Rob does not know whether she will speak for Seth again in the future -- in the hospital, Seth would also come close to Jane, and if Jane wanted to speak she could, but in that environment she would not. Because her hospital room was open, with no private space at all; orderlies and nurses came in constantly, and she simply had no opportunity to transmit for Seth in the ward. Rob worries whether she will ever transmit for Seth again.
Rob says: now I borrow this phrase from a certain energy personality -- he is referring to Seth.
I should note: three and a half years later, shortly before this book was to be published, photocopies of the entire original material were transferred to the library of Yale University3. These include thousands of pages of original Seth material manuscripts -- the regular sessions as well as the deleted private sessions, Jane's and Rob's own diaries, other miscellaneous drafts, written records and notes, tapes of the ESP class, and some of Jane's poems and paintings, all placed in the Yale University library. So today, if you want to examine photocopies of these original manuscripts, you can still go to Yale University to look them up.
Yale University preserved all of the material belonging to the two of them, not just what was related to the books, but everything they had in written form, including recorded material. Later they did publish almost all of the books, including nine volumes of The Early Sessions -- which had not been published before. Previously they had summarized the early sessions in one book called The Coming of Seth, but that one book really could not cover the content of the entire early sessions, so later they published The Early Sessions volume by volume, each one very thick. Then they also published seven volumes of their private sessions4 -- that is, the part they called the "deleted sessions" -- the private sessions he had not wanted to publish before. Then he also published four volumes of ESP class5 material. All together these add up to twenty books, all published successively later on. As for those miscellaneous notes and essays, they were not published.
Rob also placed some photographs of the two of them in the library, and he also sent the library the originals of thousands of readers' letters6 -- he treated those readers' letters as part of the Seth material and sent them, unaltered, to be preserved. This transfer activity is still continuing to this day. Fortunately, these original materials have all been preserved -- at that time there were no scanned documents, everything was on paper, but very fortunately, these materials have all been preserved.
Afterword and Essays in the Book
The commentary on the final session of this book ends here. As for what follows, I won't go into it further. There is quite a lot of material after this: accounts of their lives, followed by essays, about ten in all. They cover the lives of the two of them, things Jane herself said, Rob's feelings and reflections, and their experiences in the hospital -- very interesting and very readable. If you want to know more about what happened to Jane and Rob after this book, you can read through the essays that follow; if you are only interested in the content of this book, you can skip what comes after.
Alright, the commentary on the whole of Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment ends with this session.
注释与核实
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Source: Tennessee House of Representatives, "Monday, February 8, 1982—66th Legislative Day," 1982 (https://www.capitol.tn.gov/Archives/House/92GA/Publications/web%20journ%201982/02081982rd66.pdf) ↩
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This claim could not be verified. ↩
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Source: Yale University Library, "Guide to the Jane Roberts Papers" (https://ead-pdfs-new.library.yale.edu/4482.pdf) ↩
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Source: Seth Center, "The Personal Sessions" (https://sethcenter.com/the-personal-sessions/) ↩
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Source: Seth Center, "The Early Class Sessions" (https://sethcenter.com/early-class-sessions/) ↩
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Source: Yale University Library, "Guide to the Jane Roberts Papers" (https://ead-pdfs-new.library.yale.edu/4482.pdf) ↩