Sethworks Mooseum Annex Exhibit: Healer, Heal Thyself: Jane's Death

Date: SUN, 24 DEC 1995 11:41:54
From: Anonymoose.Israel
Subject: JANE ROBERTS DEATH

HI EVERYONE !!
DOES ANYONE KNOW FROM WHAT HAD JANE ROBERTS DIED ?
DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY INFORMATION ON HER LATAEST DAYS OR THINGS
SHE FELT LIKE TRANSFERRING "TO THE NATION" ON THOSE LATEST DAYS ??

Date: Sun, 24 Dec 1995 16:27:19 +0100 (CET)
From: anonymoose.ch
Subject: a welcome /Janes'death/ merry christmass to all

Welcome Peter-Paul
This is a lull in the usual maelstorm of sethworks, due
to the holiday season.
Happy grazings.

An anonymoose asks:

<<quoted repeat portions of previous post deleted>>

Jane's death is a subject that periodically resurfaces in Sethworks.
James N. Thames, maybe this is another candidate for the
Mooseum ? We could then refer the new people to the old threads?

Answer: the last years of Jane are documented in the comemnts
that Robert Butts included in "Dreams Evolution and Value Fulfillment",
and also in the last book, "Magical Approach".
She had arthritis and a thyroid condition , finally became immobilized
and i thinks spent the last 2 years of her life in a hospital.
There was no last will and testament on the part
of Seth taht I know of.

Have a happy holiday, you all

Anna V

Date: Mon, 25 Dec 1995 19:08:48 -0500
From: Jimbo9@aol.com
Subject: Re: Jane's Death/Mooseum reference

Anna wrote:

<<quoted repeat portions of previous posts deleted>>

Well, I have on my agenda to do the "Healer Heal Thyself?" thread.  This question could be worked in with that easily.  Lately, my life has been going through some transitions in relation to my job and I'd been busy with that.  The photo page in the Mooseum was quick and easy so I put it ahead; but maybe this is my cue to start in on coding the "Healer" thread.  Time seems available lately and the list has slowed down somewhat. Yeah... I'll see what I can do, here.

Thanks for the prod, Anna <grin>

James N. Thames :)

Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1996 17:25 EST
From: FRANK@edunet.tc.columbia.edu (FRANK WEBSTER)
Subject: Jane's Death (VERY Long)

Hi, Folks,

I officially closed my Father's estate today so it's also time for me to finish a project I've been playing with since Christmas and "close" on the issue of Jane's death.

I haven't a clue as to why Jane Roberts decided to die instead of using the Seth Material to rise above her physical situation -- those reasons are hers and hers alone.

I can only conclude that I chose the reality in which she died as a "painful challenge" (And you guys thought I hadn't been paying attention lately! <GRIN>) to follow Jane and Seth's most basic dictum about the nature of reality:

Don't take anybody's word for anything -- make it work for yourself.

Frank Jersey City, New Jersey USA

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Since questions about Jane's death arise periodically and Jimbo is addressing the issue in the Mooseum, I put together this "authoritative" essay.

Jane's death affected me deeply, so deeply that I have resisted assimilating information about her illness and passing for the past ten years. My mother sent me a clipping of the article from a local newspaper about Jane's death in 1984. I have been an avid Moose since 1973 when I found _Seth Speaks_ and bought most of the books Jane published since then. Yet, I remember skimming the newspaper article and throwing it away.

Since then, I know that I have read the extensive essays and introductory material that Rob published on the topic in _Dreams, "Evolution" and Value Fulfillment_ and _Seth: Dreams and Projections of Consciousness_. But I steadfastly rejected both their intellectual and emotional content. I reread that material for this essay with an odd feeling of duality: I felt as if this was new information that I had known all along.

The information is taken from introductory material written by Jane Roberts, Robert F. Butts, and Seth in the following books: _The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto_ (Prentice Hall, c1981); _Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment: A Seth Book_, Volumes 1 and 2 (Prentice Hall, c1986); _Seth: Dreams and Projections of Consciousness_ (Stillpoint, c1987); and _The Magical Approach: Seth Speaks About the Art of Creative Living_ (Amber-Allen, c1995).

****************

"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. . . . Value fulfillment is the largest issue here, both with Seth's books and my own experience, and if I really understood what Seth was saying . . . , I would not have needed to undergo such an uncomfortable drama in my daily life."

Jane Roberts Butts, April 17, 1982

Jane Roberts Butts (1929-1984) died at 2:08 A.M. on Wednesday, September 5, 1984, after spending 504 consecutive days in a hospital in Elmira, N.Y. She was 55 years old. Jane and her husband, Robert F. Butts, continued to work together during most of her hospitalization. Jane dictated poetry, prose and Seth sessions to Rob. Rob Butts was with her when she died. He promised Jane on her deathbed that he would publish all of her work. Rob made three drawings of Jane as she lay in her bed right after her death. Jane's body was cremated the next day.

The immediate causes of Jane's death were a combination of protein depletion, osteomyelitis, and soft tissue infections. These conditions arose out of her long-standing rheumatoid arthritis. Rheumatoid arthritis is not considered an inherited disease in the strict sense of the definition, but it is said to "run in families," particularly among the females. Jane's arthritic symptoms first appeared in the 1960s: stiffness, slowing down of motion, and general lack of mobility. She refused to get medical help until 1982. Doctors had terrified Jane as a child when her mother was bedridden with arthritis and Jane was diagnosed as having an overactive thyroid. Jane discusses her life before the Seth sessions began in 1963 in _The God of Jane_, Chapter 5, "Special Circumstances."

Rob Butts believes that Jane's youthful psychological conditioning was far more damaging than a physical tendency to inherit arthritis. He thinks that Jane began to repress her spontaneity and impulses by refusing to retaliate against her abusive mother. Jane's mother and father divorced when she was two years old and within a year her mother was having serious trouble with rheumatoid arthritis. Jane grew up fatherless with an embittered, near-psychotic, bedridden mother. Mother and daughter were supported by welfare and assisted by a series of housekeepers. Jane's mother repeatedly told her that she was worthless and that her birth had caused the arthritis.

Rob thinks that Jane began to develop a deeply rooted set of beliefs later personified as her "Sinful Self" during her intense early involvement with the Roman Catholic church. Jane spent time in a strict Catholic orphanage and Catholic priests played a significant role in her formative years. A priest once burned her "heretical" poetry. These experiences also contributed to the development of Jane's often-mentioned stubborn and secretive nature. She learned early that her creative abilities had to be hidden and protected from the world.

Physical difficulties appeared early in Jane's life. Jane was diagnosed with colitis, a stress-related syndrome, by the time she was ten. She was diagnosed with an overactive thyroid by the time she was a teenager. Her vision was very poor but she seldom wore her glasses.

Jane made many references in her books to her "hassles" and "symptoms." Through the years, she felt more and more responsible for people with physical problems who asked for Seth's help. Much of the material in the "personal," or "deleted," Seth sessions was related to Jane's physical problems.

Seth admonished Jane many times that she did not have a personal responsibility to change the world. He encouraged her to focus on her own creativity and by doing so he assured her that the world would improve. A group of 17 Seth sessions on "the magical approach" dictated during 1980 was specifically aimed at helping Jane, and others like her, to change their approach to experience and thus change their experience. Those sessions were later published as _The Magical Approach: Seth Speaks About the Creative Art of Living_.

Jane made contact in June, 1981 with a subconscious portion of her personality called her "Sinful Self" that discussed its core beliefs in the existence and effects of sin. This "Sinful Self" accepted responsibility for trying to keep her "Creative Self" from falling into error and leading others into error as well. The beliefs of this "Sinful Self" created an unrealistic superhuman self-image, and brought about the physical symptoms that symbolically and literally slowed Jane down. The physical symptoms were intended to serve as a psychological "disclaimer," protecting Jane and others from any fatal flaw in Jane's work that was the result of sin.

Rob is convinced that the publication of _The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events_ and _The God of Jane_ in 1981 caused Jane's symptoms to worsen, especially her walking abilities. To Jane and Rob, these two works represented their most direct confrontation with prevailing cultural beliefs. Adding to Jane's frustrations with her symptoms during this period were changes in policy and personnel at her publisher, and reports that other people were claiming to publicly speak for Seth and charging fees.

Jane's already impaired physical condition grew steadily worse while working on _Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment_ . She entered a hospital in Elmira, N.Y. for the first time on February 26, 1982, shortly after finishing the book. She spent 31 days there being treated for a severely underactive thyroid gland, protruding eyes and double vision, an almost total hearing loss, a slight anemia, and bedsores.

Jane tried to view her physical symptoms as creative endeavors that she was using for her own purposes. After returning home from the hospital, Jane wrote on April 5, 1982: "In later years it's become impossible for me to close my eyes to the multiple pressing differences between Seth's explanation of the nature of reality, and of our own private experience of it. . . . 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. 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."

In retrospect, Jane and Rob agreed that together they had been setting up the conditions for Jane's illness for many years. Jane seemed to have decided to experience herself and her world in intensely physical and emotional terms as opposed to the largely intellectual approach that had characterized most of her life. Jane revealed that she had started toying with the idea of ending her life and begun a half-conscious retreat from the physical world as early as 1979. She intended to let herself gradually drift away from physical experience.

Jane examined the motives behind her illness and their connection to her life as a writer and poet. On April 16, 1982, she dictated, "Maybe I'd 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 the *joy* had forever vanished? Maybe that course was better than the determination and painful discomforts that might be necessary to prolong lifely existence." Later, on May 27th. she dictated: "I probably didn't want to write any more. I feared that 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. . . . "

In the first Seth session after her return from her initial hospital stay, held on April 12, 1982, Seth explored the reasons behind Jane's difficulties. Seth told Jane that for some time she had been conducting a debate on an unconscious level over whether to live or die. Jane may have responded to a similar crisis point in 1963 with the spontaneous automatic delivery of the manuscript, "The Physical Universe As Idea Construction," which led to a new direction in her thinking and opened the way for the Seth sessions.

Seth made the point that Jane had been trying to be a "perfect self" and felt that she was failing to live up to an impossibly superperfect subconscious psychological model. Seth claimed that Jane's body had nothing wrong with it except the application of beliefs. He told Jane that she did not have arthritis, *per se*, and that she could "set aside" that medical diagnosis. A few days later, Seth told Jane that the same thyroid problem had occurred several times before and each time the gland had repaired itself.

Seth tried to show Jane that she had unconsciously chosen her "symptoms" for protective and creative purposes. According to Seth, Jane had adopted her physical immobility as a form of protection against going too far, too fast with her unique abilities. Also, she used her physical immobility to intensify her focus on her creative abilities, and to reinforce the strongly secretive natures of both Rob and Jane.

Jane and Rob both believed that they chose the challenges involved with Jane's illnesses, but coping with those circumstances often led them to question their ability to meet those challenges. The search for the creative reasons behind Jane's condition often frustrated Rob. He found comfort in Seth's encouragement that ". . . there are no errors, for each action, wether 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."

Rob felt that Jane's circumstances were not influenced by Reincarnational Selves or Counterpart Selves. But, he believed that he and Jane were simultaneously exploring all stages of her illness in a series of probable worlds. Both he and Jane knew that they were dreaming about Jane's situation but they did not recall the dreams consistently enough to work with them consciously.

Jane reentered the hospital in April, 1983 where she remained until her death on September 5, 1984. In the months following Jane's death, Rob had several conscious contacts with Jane during which he felt her presence, as well as dream contacts. A number of Jane's readers sent Rob communications they claimed to have received from Jane in her afterdeath state. Based on his intuitive response to the material, Rob feels that one of those correspondents, Valerie Woods, has received messages from Jane or possibly contacted Jane's world view.

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email: frank@edunet.tc.columbia.edu                            

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Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 18:15:25 -0700
From: Samantha Riordan
To: sethworks@mlist.access.digex.net
Subject: Jane Roberts Illness

As well, there is a process to learning how to channel, at least there was for me. I had to go through tremendous "difficulties" to reach the point I am currently at. I have been told in my personal channels, that I needed to go through these difficulties to become a channel and for a very long time( and on off days still do), I thought to myself, well this simply isn't worth it. Becoming a channel isn't worth this pain, this ugliness, this anger and rage. I have raged at my voices, yelled at them, cussed at them, refused to lsiten to them, told them many times that they were full of crap, shut them out and hid myself from them. But I kept learning. Recently I was told by my "voices" that being a channel was rather like being put on an accelerated course in school. You had to learn and learn faster. That has certainly been my experience. I also have a supposed debilitating disease and unlike Jane Roberts, primarily my disease doesn't effect me that much. My diagnoses was that by the time I was 24, I would be bed ridden for the rest of my life, and probably wouldn't walk. Well, I am 33 years old, I teach modern dance and ballet in my spare time to keep in shape, I have a household with a toddler. I maintain and a business that I own and run, and have run for 12 years now. I am certainly active. My channeling helped me to successfully battle my disease, but again it is a daily moment to moment battle that sometimes, I lose. There ARE days when I am sick. I have learned how to deal with these days and how to fight them, ironically enough by NOT fighting them. If I weren't a channel I believe that I would be that 24 year old on that sick bed, and I wouldn't have my daughter. However, I STILL have the disease.

I think that Jane Roberts didn't want to be "responsible" for other people's lives. That she had a message to bring and she brought it. But she didn't want to have to "fix" other people's lives. She wanted them to learn how to fix their own lives, that was her message and she offered some fine techniques. The way she died was the ultimate comment on having her readers take responsibility for their own lives. It was her way of saying, here is my message it has worked for me at times and it NOT worked for me at times. TAKE responsibility and choose for yourself if you wish to believe it. Look at the work and if you have to look at my life, but then you because of the way I died have to "choose" whether or not to believe in the ideas I presented. She died because she didn't want to be responsible for other people's lives and their choices.

I have learned through my own channeling and through my own illness that the "illness" is a message from one part of the self to another part of the self. Jane Roberts message was that she didn't want other looking up to her, she didn't want to be "Saint Jane", she just wanted to be Jane. If you choose to believe her, then it was your life. Jane Roberts was STILL a human being and she had to die at sometime, she choose a way to do it, so that when people looked back at her life they would have to choose for themselves what to believe about her and her life. If she had lived a perfect life, and not been sick and lived to a 130, and was rich, etc. then a lot more people would give credence to her ideas. See it worked for her. She didn't want people to choose based on her life, she wanted people to choose for themselves whether that was they way they wanted to live or not, whether they wanted the ideas for the ideas sake. She wanted the work to stand on it's own, like every other writer I know.

When I first started channeling for "public consumption" I wanted, truly wanted to keep my "personal" life out of the work, and to a large extent that is still a goal of mine. Yet what I have found is that people want to know about our lives and sometimes, sometimes I tell them. On interesting aftereffect of telling about my personal life is that many times I will get letters from readers saying well, if you have all the answers how come you have problems. Many times these are very angry letters. I am a channel, I am overall proud of my work as a channel, but I still have problems in my life. I still have to pay my bills at the end of the month. I still have a toddler to raise, I still have a kitty litter to empty and dirty dishes to deal with.

I still have a business and all of those issues to deal with. I have to file my taxes just like everyone else. I still fight with my mate every so often, although we fight in ways that discuss why we created this fight with each other. Our fights are more intellectual then before. Being a channel has helped me and guided me in many ways, it has changed my life in profound ways, it has helped me to deal with my life much more successfully. But I STILL have to live it. I think Jane Roberts had to live it too, and she didn't want to have everyone looking to her as a the end all and be all of existence, she didn't want to "found" a religion, she simply wanted people to "play" with her ideas. That is also my goal. It is not my goal to be a messiah, it is my goal to explore ideas that I am given.

Lately I dream a great deal of Jane Roberts and my life and her life are frighteningly parallel. We both come from abused backgrounds and were raised Catholics. We were both only children raised by our unbalanced mothers. We were both "trained" as writers. We both lived pretty isolated lives. We both battle disabling illness. We both married creative men and have "great" marriages with supportive mates. Also we both work with our mates. Interestingly enough I live in a house on a hill, some people in the local area refer to it as "the hill house". And of course we both are channels with again surprisingly(frighteningly?) similar messages. To me, Jane Roberts teaches me what to be careful of. Be careful in my work to not let these ideas overwhelm me, to remember to be "down" to earth, to remember again that these are ideas to play with. These ideas are NOT the end all and be all. they are ideas, they are concepts, to play with, to fun with to experiment with. Jane Roberts is a symbol to me of experimentation. I think that she would have wanted that more than anything else.

Other postings by Samantha are available at:
http://members.aol.com/jjsamantha/

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