“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

This time, though, I have the translation of a whole composition to present. Jane spontaneously gave voice to her song yesterday afternoon while sitting in the glass-enclosed front porch of our hill house. The day was mild and sunny and breezy, and I’d opened all of the windows for her. The rich green lawn sloped down to the great maple and the sumac trees lining the road. I hadn’t asked her to do a song for this last essay; she told me afterward that she hadn’t realized I was that close to finishing it. (The whole series has taken much longer than I expected it to, though.) I only know that Jane began to sing in very melodious tones that flowed through the house. I easily heard her from my writing room. “Oh, your singing is so clear and sweet!” her visiting nurse had exclaimed the other day, when my wife had begun to sing while the nurse was changing the dressings on her decubiti. And that present clarity of voice, almost free of tremor, showed how much Jane has improved since returning home. How different her singing is now from that very mournful Sumari song she’d recorded last February, a few days before going into the hospital. “Let my soul find shelter elsewhere,” she’d lamented then.

Jane didn’t tape this new Sumari, though—which we regretted—for she wasn’t able to get out of her chair to hunt for her recorder; I was too charmed just listening to her sing to think of a tape. She wrote down the translation as soon as she finished the song. When she read it to me I knew at once that it would go here, for a few words she certainly sang of the basic theme of these essays—of the sublime, immortal consciounesses of the earth and All That Is, of that loving redemption that consciousness always makes possible somehow, somewhere, in the eternal private world of each of us, and that each of us always seeks:

[...] Jane can write, speak, and sing in Sumari — rapid, seemingly-nonsense words that she unhesitatingly translates into English prose and poetry of great beauty. (I can write in Sumari, but Jane has to translate it for me — and I’m always surprised at the results.) My wife has a powerful singing voice. [...]

Winter birds sing

And it sings now through each of you as it sings through me, and as it sings through the plants that “belong” to our Lady of Florence. [...]

[...] And if the consciousness within the leaves did not sing with the vitality of existence, then no amount of chemicals would make it live. [...]

[...] Listen to the knowledge within the cells of your fingers and they will teach your intellect what joy is—and from this your intellect can learn to sing! [...]

[...] If you feel like singing, sing. [...]

[...] I do not sing and I do not Mu, so we will let Ruburt sing and Mu. [...]

[...] (Very loudly.) And so I bid you all a fond good evening, and again, I let you know that the vitality that sings through this form sings also through your own. [...]

[...] In 329 on the other side of the bathroom we could hear Christina through two doors, singing in Russian and English. [...] I’d detected a distinctly childlike feeling in her singing, of a woman who is over 90 years old. [...]

(Now Christina was sounding off in jumbled English and Russian, singing bits and pieces of Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday, Georgia, and so forth. [...]

Now you may all sing, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” if you prefer. [...]

Now, if you want singing I will have our friend, Ruburt, sing some night but he would not like it. [...]

[...] Carolyn told how she disliked hymn singing.)

(Jane was singing to herself when I got to 330 today. [...] She said she was singing to herself down there too, while waiting, and an attendant came in to ask her what was wrong.

[...] This is highly simplified of course, there were other reasons, but in singing you were not harsh, and in singing you communicated in a way that you could not in the earlier life, and in the singing also you gave of yourself in a way you did not earlier.

[...] The verbal facility came easily in song, and so you wandered, singing, from town to town, using for your songs the news that was happening . [...]

If I could sing that beautifully, I would sing for you through our classes. [...]

[...] WL’s recorder failed to record a part of the above, and in ascertaining what portion was missed, a short burst of singing emanated from the recorder’s previously used tape. [...]

If I could sing that beautifully, I would sing for you through our classes. [...]

[...] Brad’s recorder failed to record a part of the above, and in ascertaining what portion was missed, a short burst of singing emanated from the recorder’s previously used tape. [...]

[...] It rings and sings through the universe and through your entire personality. [...]

that the universe sings

[...] It rings and sings through the universe, and through your entire personality. [...]

[...] I will not do the singing, it is not in my line. [...]

[...] Someone mentions that Seth would not sing)

[...] I must take singing lessons and we must have a prayer meeting, and then you will feel that have [sic] done something. If I told you that I would sing for you, then I do believe you would all be here “en force.” [...]

and maybe sing a little song.”

I think most people would agree that Jane’s singing in Sumari is extraordinarily original, and that she’s an excellent natural dramatist. [...] She was fully aware that that quality became much more obvious in her class singing and sessions, but she didn’t have to consciously evoke it—the drama was just there. [...]

[...] As with her speaking for Seth, her greatest power and drama in singing was engendered in class. [...] The same was true of her singing, when she ranged from the most delicate soprano trills and nuances to powerful, much deeper emanations.

I have come to feel that I should have encouraged Jane to speak and sing much more often in Sumari, either when we were alone here at the house, or on a Friday night, say, when we had company. I gave up doing so partly because I hesitated to add to her pressure to perform, whether or not the material might be recorded, and partly because, except on rare occasions, she didn’t offer to sing—or to have a session—as she used to spontaneously do in our downtown apartments.

(“At about this time Monday night, we were in a nightclub, although I don’t know whether or not this could be called a charade, mostly singing and limbo dancing.”)

[...] Definitely a nuisance there, a loudmouthed Englishman who annoyed everyone by whistling and singing with the band, not many windows, but some shrubs.”)

[...] You may sing “happy birthday” to me—I will give you a list of my birthdays and you can have a party at every class.

[...] You may sing “Happy Birthday” to me—I will give you a list of my birthdays and you can have a party at every class! [...]