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A Poem for Rob from Jane After Death

(Jane Roberts died September 5, 1984. This excerpt from the Introduction to Seth, Dreams and Projections of Consciousness, was started by Rob Butts thirteen months after Jane died. The book was published in 1987 by Stillpoint Publishing, Walpole, New Hampshire. Rob is the original Copyright holder, which is now held by his widow, Laurel Davies Butts. Both Rob and Laurel organized unpublished material from Seth and Jane for this book and added support material to make sense of it all. To give you some idea of what’s included in this book, here are some chapter headings:

Chapter 1 – Dreams, Creativity, and the Unconscious
Chapter 7 – The Inner Senses
Chapter 12 – Dream Recall: How to Remember Your Dreams
Chapter 14 – Dreams and Health
Chapter 19 – Out-of-Body Experiences from the Dream State
Chapter 22 – The Inside of Consciousness. – Pete)

*****

Rob:

“I first heard from my unseen correspondent, Valerie Wood, not long after Jane had died thirteen months ago. I sent her one of the cards I’d had printed, giving a few details about Jane’s death and stating my determination to carry on with our work. Valerie responded with some poetry relative to Jane’s passing, and my reactions to her death, that I interpreted at once as being very evocative of Jane and me. At the time I didn’t know what to believe about the source of the material, even while I found it reinforcing my own contacts with Jane. Were Valerie’s messages from her own subconscious? From Jane’s world view? From Jane herself?

“I wrote Valerie that she was gifted psychically and suggested that she might cautiously proceed with learning more about her abilities, to whatever extent she chose. Valerie is thirty-eight years old, and lives with her husband in a western state; they have two children. She works part time in the field of education. She is developing her gifts through study and practice. During the year she sent me a number of messages “from” and about Jane. Some of them subjectively feel right to me; they effortlessly mirror or echo the way the Jane I lived with for almost thirty years often talked and wrote. In fact, at times I found the similarities between the contents of those messages and my ideas of Jane’s own ambience to be striking.

“Valerie’s material raises as many questions as it gives answers for, of course. Are her messages really from Jane, or is she “only” telepathically picking up from me what I want to hear, and flashing it back to me from her trance states — as communications from Jane? An unbelieving scientist would say that Valerie is hardly in touch with a discarnate Jane, since science doesn’t accept survival (after) death. Nor would the idea of reaching Jane’s world view be considered telepathy from me, for both of those concepts are scientifically unacceptable. The most parsimonious view — the simplest, stingiest one — would be that through studying the Seth material Valerie subconsciously divines the replies I want from my dead wife, and in all subjective innocence comes through with her trance messages for me, to fit my own stubborn belief in Jane’s survival.

“I may be projecting my own fears here, but I don’t agree with the scientific rejection of all portions of the schemata listed above. The objections don’t feel right to me. They question not only Valerie’s sincerity and performance but my own, as well. I keep thinking about the twenty years of ideas and study that Jane and I put into the Seth material. Surely my contacts with her, and the work of gifted, dedicated people like Valerie, show us human potential in very challenging ways, hinting at how much we have yet to learn about our individual and collective consciousnesses. And out of my own selfish need and longing for my wife, who is dead, I want people to read her books so that they can understand her great contributions.

“Right now, though, I want to present a message from Valerie that she received upon awakening at 6:30 A.M. on September 6, 1985 — some six weeks ago, in other words, and a year and a day after Jane died.

(But first this note: In Appendix 19 for Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality, I offer material from Jane and from Seth about that atonal, very distant-sounding Seth Two. I quote myself as writing that “Seth Two exists in relation to Seth in somewhat the same manner that Seth does to Jane, although that analogy shouldn’t be carried very far”)

“Just as received from Valerie Wood, and with her permission:

For Rob

You will join me as I have joined others.
No physical form or physical thought
can express my existence.
The term love, with its message
of caring for another,
is the most important of our
messages in the physical.
Seth Two is to me now what Seth was to you.
I am a step higher but not removed.
Yet, I have changed enough since “my
death” that it is difficult,
at times, to relate to your existence.
The love and the emotions you feel
are the connectives between us.
My love for you has not changed but expanded
in a way you do not comprehend.
Physical needs are for physical beings,
and I understand and know this.
Touch is important at your level.
My new or returned mind loves you more
deeply than in our earth time together,
but it is also much more
understanding of physical need.
When I said, “Be for me as I would
be for thee,” I didn’t mean to limit you.
Be the physical person you need to be,
as you are physical for a limited and
for a purposeful reason.
Enjoy physical reality between others,
for the mind endures and exists
beyond your understanding and existence.
I love you as you were
and as we will be.
Your now is for you to enjoy.
I never judge your actions, and this
I repeat with love and utmost understanding.
Be yourself and in being yourself
you will be for me as I would be for thee.
You do well and I watch you often.
Continue to love physical life
while you are physical.

Until later. (Jane.)

“Rob,” Valerie wrote at the end of her material, “I hope this has meaning for you, and whether it is Jane’s, or my subconscious words, it is beautiful, wise and useful — best to you until next time.”

“Indeed. A commitment is required upon my part in this case: I think that Valerie’s message for me is from Jane. A possible qualification of that belief can be that the material is inter-wound with data Valerie picked up from Jane’s world view, where Jane wouldn’t have necessarily been involved — only the body of her personalized and emotional experience in physical life. I cannot objectively prove either of those propositions. Yet I have my own intuitive proof, because I strongly feel that the contents of Valerie’s message fit very well both the physical and the nonphysical Jane Roberts.

“Aside from the obvious reassurances Jane is quoted as offering to me, as a physical creature, I could comment extensively upon some of the other points she makes — especially the two I briefly refer to below; the reader may enlarge upon portions of the message also, depending upon what he or she understands of the Seth-Jane philosophy. Jane remarked, “Yet, I have changed enough since ‘my death’ that it is difficult, at times, to relate to your existence.” And, “My love for you has not changed but expanded in a way you do not comprehend.” How interesting these statements are! Does Jane contradict herself in them? No — yet the meanings within them require intuitive exploration and conscious comprehension. They’re very personal observations that at the same time echo that mystery of life I’m always referring to.”

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