“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Change notes

2024-04-09

1. fixed some headings not displaying their correct size
   • method of formatting sentence fragments was erroneously closing block tags (e.g. <h1>)

2024-04-01

1. fixed text reflow when resizing
   • wide and narrow layouts reflowed, but the middle layout was producing a horizontal scrollbar

2024-03-31

index fixes from 2024-01-02 code quality review finally reviewed & published

1. missing content restored

   • section PRELIMINARY NOTES from Preface By Seth in DEaVF1
     (only Note: Private Session, September 13, 1979 at the end was present)

   • Poem One and Poem Two from Chapter 11, Session 938 in DEaVF2

   • line "That protects the cellar [windows]" from Bird Sculpts in TES1

   • two paragraphs from the end of Rob Pendulum Q&A June 12, 1967 re: Jane's food allergies in TES8

   • section SETH II in TES9

   • section Introduction By Rob Butts in TPS1

   • Jane's Notes from Deleted Session April 24, 1979 in TPS5

2. fixed PART ONE, PART TWO, and PART THREE text location in SDPC

   • were erroneously being placed at the end of their previous sessions
   • actual session headings were correct

3. fixed empty paragraphs being erroneously counted

   • a few existing paragraph links in the wild might land on adjacent paragraphs

4. fixed bold not applied to some headings

2024-01-23

1. fixed highlighting terms adjacent to stop words

2023-12-23

1. added clickable list of terms seen on the current page
2. fixed scrolling to excerpts (again)
   • brief text flash when clicking them or paragraph links
3. reduced similar session count to 4

2023-12-19

1. added links to paragraphs
   • they also work with rich copy & paste
2. added individual copyright notices of every book
   • also added when copying & pasting
3. performance: whether a session spans chapters is now pre-computed

2023-12-16

1. Rich text copy & paste, adds [...] for partial paragraphs and even supports <table>
2. fixed scrolling to excerpts

2023-12-11

1. performance: cache minimal viable readable URL calculations

2023-12-07

1. fixed DateParserPlugin bug in Whoosh itself

2023-11-25

1. changed session: from text to numeric, supports ranges
2. fixed searching multiple content fields simultaneously (all:, stemmed:, exact:)
3. fixed accidental term highlighting of spelling suggestions
4. fixed extra spaces in URLs e.g. cat++mouse
5. performance: character data stored in index

2022-03-08

1. "stopwords" no longer highlighted unless adjacent to non-stopwords
2. better paragraph margins on mobile

2022-02-28

1. switch to porter2 stemming algorithm

2022-02-24

1. massive formatting update: underlining, tables, no errors? (except in original)
2. consistent yet random term highlight colors
3. capitalized key-term if always capitalized in document (proper nouns)
4. clicking a key-term again will do a global search
5. dark theme if your PC or phone uses one
6. session range search e.g. session:[300 to 350]
7. better previews w/images for Facebook etc. links
8. additional books: TSM and SDPC
9. display most popular then longest form of each key-term
10. major performance improvements
11. better, prettier unique document links and pagination
12. auto-expand single result headings
13. heading: field now all headings (e.g. part, chapter, session)
14. session: field now session number only (f exists)
15. common: renamed to all:

2019-02-26

1. Improved omitted paragraph counts to exclude blank lines.
2. Fixed first and last omitted paragraph counts.
3. Fixed a rare date parsing error.

2018-08-15

1. Fixed searches containing results with single paragraphs (envelope experiment captions).
2. Fixed viewing single results from a date range search.

2018-03-12

1. Changed site URL from search.sethtalks.com to findingseth.com, also added SSL support (HTTPS). Both changes are good for SEO I imagine.

2018-02-11

1. Removed bullets. Excerpts now display with numbered paragraphs when ordered by relevance, and as a single document with "[... X paragraphs ...]" omission indicators when ordered by position.

2018-02-04

1. Changed the default excerpt ordering for single sessions to be chronological, instead of by relevance. The multiple result view is still ordered by relevance by default.

2017-12-15

1. Added "Did you mean ...?" query corrections. I personally supplemented these with US/UK word variants from Wikipedia, so a search for analyse (which finds results like analyses) will also suggest the useful analyze.
2. Accented characters are now handled intelligently, a search for résume or résumé will yield results.
3. Added a "Similar sessions" section to search results of a single session. This includes queries without any actual search terms, e.g. a simple query like /q/session:522/ (a how-to for "psychological time") will link to similar sessions.

2017-12-11

1. Added a simple little "search term coverage" % indicator when viewing an individual session.

2017-12-10

1. Search now supports stylized quotation marks “ and ”.
2. The rare sessions that span multiple chapters now display full paragraphs for both hits, e.g.: /q/session:571+consciousness/h/asc/.

2017-11-08

1. Modified "[...]" omission links to appear at the beginning and end of excerpts where applicable, not just between fragments.
2. Added "More..." links to so you can tell explicitly when all excerpts are visible on the result page.

2017-11-06

1. Added date search, though crudely. (An error will remove the date portion and continue.)
2. Added sorting results by earliest, latest, or the usual, relevance.
3. Added sorting excerpts by their original position in the document.
4. When viewing a single result, all excerpts are now full paragraphs.

2017-10-11

1. Added meta og:description tag for Facebook to include quotations in link previews.

2017-10-09

1. Added The Early Class Sessions: Book 1.
2. Added The Early Class Sessions: Book 2.
3. Added The Early Class Sessions: Book 3.
4. Added The Early Class Sessions: Book 4.

2017-07-04

1. Added hover text explanations to the example searches.
2. Likewise, book abbreviations show the full name on hover.
3. Added quick links for searching the multi-volume books.

2017-06-22

1. Added The Personal Sessions: Book 5.
2. Added The Personal Sessions: Book 6.
3. Added The Personal Sessions: Book 7.

2017-06-14

1. Added The Personal Sessions: Book 1.
2. Added The Personal Sessions: Book 2.
3. Added The Personal Sessions: Book 3.
4. Added The Personal Sessions: Book 4.
5. Hopefully fixed the rate limits to truly be per-user.
6. Improved the Kindle store link now that Amazon has a means to link to eBook filtered search results.

2017-03-28

1. Added automated citations when copying an excerpt to the clipboard, this (among other things) only works in modern web browsers.
2. Adjusted hyperlink styles to better indicate visited links, highlight omissions between sentence fragments, and hint that the leading ► symbols can be clicked to expand the full heading.

2017-03-10

1. I reverted an earlier change. Stop words (common words like "the" and "are") will no longer be searched by default. It's just faster and better this way. I added the common keyword to search with them explicitly. E.g. /q/common:'we+are+seth'/ /q/all:'we+are+seth'/
2. Added support for OpenSearch. Certain browsers will now recognize the page as a search engine. (E.g. in Google Chrome you can perform a search from the address bar by simply typing search.sethtalks.com and pressing Tab.)
3. Most symbols in URLs, such as ~() should no longer be converted into their ugly %126 %28 %29 equivalents.
4. Links to single sessions are now shorter for better copy and paste, e.g. /q/session:292+beer+OR+wine/ instead of /q/session:'292+October+10+1966'+beer+OR+wine.
   This is only done where possible.
5. Renamed to Seth search engine.
6. Fixed a bug when searching for apostrophes. They are now changed to spaces (this is how Whoosh handles them internally, so this is necessary to get the results you'd expect).
7. Fixed a bug where clicking Search wouldn't take you to the first page if you were on a later page from a previous search.

2017-01-28

1. Finally implemented pagination. Can now browse all the results of a search instead of "Top 7". The same excerpt limits are in place.

2017-01-25

1. Fixed a major (though hopefully seldom encountered) bug which broke certain searches. /q/rob+pendulum/ is now working. Problem was within the sentence fragment formatter due to CommonMark's use of HTML entities such as " whereas BeautifulSoup converts them.
2. Fixed it so links to headings with symbols between letters (like Q&A) should now work, e.g. TES8 Rob Pendulum Q&A June 12, 1967.

2016-10-17

1. Can now search with exact: to avoid stemming, e.g.: /q/exact:thankful/
2. Can now search for common words, which makes this search possible: /q/'we+are+seth'/
   /q/common:'we+are+seth'/ /q/all:'we+are+seth'/
3. Numbers are now allowed in the key-terms lists (except the session's own #). Fun to see years jump out like in /q/book:tes8/.
4. Single quotes now persist in the the address bar (instead of %27) when clicking search button, just like arriving from a link.

2016-10-16

1. Added The Early Sessions: Book 9. Eureka!
2. Fixed a bug which left out the sessions (mostly ESP class) from the appendix of Seth Speaks.
3. This bug also left out the final session 873 from NoME, now included.

2016-10-15

1. Added The Early Sessions: Book 8.
2. Added missing headings to TES4-7.
3. Switched from an allowlist to a denylist approach for TES7, TES8, and TES9 due to an exceptionally large number of unique headings.

2016-10-13

1. Added The Early Sessions: Book 7.
2. Fixed sentence fragment excerpts to no longer end on Dr. Sr. Jr. Mr. Ms. and Mrs. or a single letter period, like F. in Robert F. Butts.

2016-10-12

1. Added The Early Sessions: Book 6.

2016-10-02

1. Key-term links are now displayed next to session headings. This gives an excellent summary of a session and enables casual browsing, a search like /q/book:tma/ gives a browsable summary of the entire book.

2016-09-29

1. Fixed a bug where result links weren't working if they didn't have a session, e.g. an appendix.

2016-09-28

1. Clicking a result heading now narrows the search to just that session and gives up to 50 excerpts (ought to be all of them). The top few paragraphs are full, the rest have intentionally fragmented sentences.
2. Added a little Kindle icon image and linked that to the book in the Kindle store. The book cover image now links to the physical copy on sethcenter.com
3. Replaced the <details><summary> spoiler tags with actual JavaScript so that the heading link and images are both clickable. You now have to precisely click on the arrow to view the longer book/part/chapter titles.
4. Fixed a bug where [...] was inserted even if there wasn't an omission.

2016-09-27

1. Can now link to specific searches. Check it out! /q/beer+OR+chocolate/

2016-09-26

1. Added The Early Sessions: Book 5.
2. Fixed some incorrectly bold excerpt text (due to different implementations of Markdown I suspect).
3. Sentence fragments should now be italicized correctly... probably. Took some trickery.

2016-09-23

1. Now only the first session excerpts are full paragraphs, the rest are only sentence fragments (for each term, so potentially the entire paragraph). Thanks to that I've increased the number of search results!
2. Performance has been significantly improved. (After fixing the previous bug I realized a slow workaround I was using was no longer necessary.)
3. Fixed a major bug with the paragraph/excerpt ranking. Should now see the true top ranked excerpts of each session.

2016-09-22

1. Added The Early Sessions: Book 4.

2016-09-21

1. Added The Early Sessions: Book 3.
2. Linked title to blank search page.

2016-09-20

1. Added The Early Sessions: Book 1.
2. Added The Early Sessions: Book 2.
3. Included links to Rick Stack's book store and specifically the digital section (as best I could) of Jane's books on Amazon.com.

2016-09-19

1. Added "Unknown" Reality Volume 2.

2016-09-18

1. Added "Unknown" Reality Volume 1.
2. Added headings that are found only in the table of contents (e.g. session summaries in Unknown Reality).
3. All book sections have been added, even those without sessions (e.g. introductory essays). (25+ hours non-stop work later!)
4. The chapter field has been renamed heading.

2016-09-15

1. Can now filter by chapter heading and session in addition to book.
2. If you specify one or more of the above without any actual words to be searched you will get a list of sessions. Very handy. Search by name, date, number, whatever!
3. Added examples of the above.
4. Fixed a bug where sessions in the preface or appendix were left out (e.g. SS & NoPR).

2016-09-14

1. Added some quick-access book filter links.
2. Examples are now clickable.
3. Paragraphs with equal rank are now sorted consistently (earliest first).
4. Added a "Results for: <your search query>" header.

2016-09-13

1. Can now search within, or exclude, specific books.
2. Dropped number of sessions in results from 10 to 5, remember you can narrow by book for "more".
3. Added book thumbnails.
4. Fixed it so sessions that span between chapters are no longer missing their second half (e.g. the beginning of NoPR Chapter 16).

2016-09-12

1. 3 days of development time later (and 10+ years of coding experience, haha) I launched with the following books: SS, NoPR, NotP, NoME, TMA, DEaVF1, DEaVF2, WTH

Example searches (mouseover for explanation):

• cat mouse
• beer OR wine
• "conscious mind"
• exact:thankful
• "mind matter"~3
• book:tes? exercise
• hospital date:"feb 1964"
• all:"we are seth"
• NOT book:wth exercise
• heading:(essay 4) mind

• "five minutes" OR "ten minutes" book:(ss OR nopr OR tma)
• heading:("8 sleep" OR "13 good and evil") sleep

Leave out the content words for casual browsing:

• book:tsm
• heading:dreams
• heading:"chapter 16"
• session:636
• session:[300 to 350]
• date:[oct 1970 to dec 8 1970]
• book:tma heading:*teen

Query language reference | Change notes^New!

The entire Seth collection, including audio, early and personal sessions, can be ordered from sethcenter.com. Audiobooks and Kindle from amazon.com.

Book content copyright © Laurel Davies-Butts.

“This material is not for those who would deceive themselves with pretty, packaged, ribboned, truths—truths that are parceled out and cut apart so that you can digest them. [...]

This material demands more. It demands that you intellectually and intuitively expand—it demands that you use your abilities.“