“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The questions I referred to concern the fact that once in The Seth Material and nine times in Seth Speaks, by my count, Seth spoke of Atlantis as being in our historical past. [...] Seth’s theory of simultaneous time, which can encompass the notion of future probabilities projected backward into an apparent past, for instance, leaves great leeway for the interpretation of events or questions, however, and makes the idea of contradiction posed by an Atlantis in the past and one in the future too simple as an explanation. At any given “time,” depending on whatever information he’s given previously, Jane could just as easily quote Seth as placing Atlantis in our historic past, or in a probable past, present, or future — or all four “places” at once, for that matter. [...]

(I read to Jane the few paragraphs of material Seth had given on Atlantis. [...] I’ll have to admit that we cringe a bit when Seth talks about cultish concepts like Atlantis. [...] From these remarks it’s easy to see that we feel much more comfortable with the ideas about Atlantis that Seth advanced in this session. [...]

(The tenor of Seth’s material tonight led me to think that he was close to finishing “Unknown” Reality, but since Jane evidently didn’t feel that way I said nothing about it. [...]

1. This is a good place to insert these excerpts from the session Seth gave for ESP class on February 16, 1971, three years before starting “Unknown” Reality. While it leads to a number of questions, his material still sums up certain important meanings that lie behind or within the overall concept of probable realities.

1. For Seth on the fetus — its astral and reincarnational attributes, its energy, its growth, its perceptions from inside the womb — see the quotations from sessions 503–4 in the Appendix for The Seth Material. Those sessions were held in September 1969.

One might say that Seth continued his own tree data almost five years later, in the 453rd session for December 4, 1968. Jane presented that rather brief session in full in the Appendix for The Seth Material, but from it I’d like to quote these lines:

3. In the 684th session for Volume 1, Seth came through with one of my favorite statements (even if it is grammatically incorrect): “The cells precognate.” Much of his material in that session applies here: “It is truer to say that heredity operates from the future backward into the past….”

4. I suggest reviewing Seth’s excellent material on probabilities, cellular consciousness, the moment point, and related concepts in the 681st session for Volume 1.

(Time may show that this session is one of the most significant to date, as far as demonstrations of the authenticity of the Seth Material are concerned. [...] It might be added that Jane and I have no set opinions concerning the Seth Material. [...] We let the material speak for itself.

(My writing hand was tired, even with Seth’s help. I asked Bill to make a drawing of any materialization Seth might perform for him on his trip.

(The following reference by Seth to the mixing of the papers stems from the fact that in reading back some of the notes of the session to Jane and Bill aloud, I had gotten them out of sequence; for a minute or so I had not realized what had happened, and the material had sounded oddly jumbled.)

(This reproduction, combining the two drawings Bill MacDonnel made of the apparition he saw in the 68th Session, was published in 1970 by Prentice-Hall, Inc., in Jane’s The Seth Material. [...]

The collection will include our family trees; my father’s journals and photographs; Jane’s and my own grade-school, high-school, college, and family data; our youthful creative efforts in writing and painting; the comic books and other commercial artwork I produced; our early published and unpublished short stories; my original notes for the sessions; session transcripts, whether published or unpublished, “regular,” private, or from ESP class; tapes, including those made in class of Jane speaking for Seth and/or singing in Sumari; our notes, dream records, journals, and manuscripts; our sketches and paintings; Jane’s extensive poetry; our business correspondence; books, contracts, and files; newsletters about the Seth material, published in the United States and abroad (independently of Jane and me); the greater number of letters from readers—in short, a mass of material showing how our separate beginnings flowed together and resulted in the production of a joint lifework.

[...] An archivist from Manuscripts and Archives has visited us to get a rough idea of the amount of material we have to offer. [...] Jane and I are most pleased that the Seth material and everything connected with it are to be preserved.

Her delivery as Seth was for the most part comparatively subdued.)

(“Good evening, Seth.”)

She’s been most intrigued by Seth’s referrals to the concept of “master events” ever since he gave them in the final session for Chapter 8—preparations, she hoped, for his material this evening. She came to play her own conscious part in those preparations, too: Yesterday she’d received many insights from Seth on “master overlays,” and made notes. She typed some of her information after supper tonight, and I’m presenting this in Note 1, just to show how closely at times the body of the Seth material lies to her “ordinary” consciousness.)

3. I think that Seth’s insight here—regarding “the far more dependable behavior of the other species”—is excellent indeed. [...] I like to keep such penetrating remarks before me, and wish the reader would too, for I often fear they’ll become lost from conscious view within his material. (As an example, I doubt if this one will be referred to in the index for Dreams.) But I also think that intuitively we know the truth Seth so briefly expressed here, and that it never has been or ever will be really lost.

2. This paragraph of Seth’s at once reminded me of some of his most evocative earlier material on animal consciousness. [...]

Neither of us had counted the sessions we have for Dreams, but when I made a quick check the next day I was surprised to discover that Jane’s estimate is only two short of the 32 sessions Seth has called book dictation. I’m still busy typing the final manuscript for Mass Events, but we’ve already planned that I’ll be adding several “nonbook” sessions, and excerpts from others, to Dreams when finally I get to concentrate on the production work for it And my own opinion, I explained to Jane, is that Seth is considerably more than halfway through this book, even if we add more extra sessions to it.)

(Although Seth has given us relatively little on the fifth dimension, he has made many references to this one session. [...] Notice also that this material was obtained 60 sessions ago; and as far as my memory serves, Seth has not contradicted himself on this fifth dimensional material in any sessions that have taken place since then.)

[...] She said she could feel Seth abruptly leave when he reached the end of the session. [...] She is of the opinion that Seth likes to deliver his material in batches, whether they be long or short.

[...] Nor did we get to ask about the Hubbell Roberts material included at the beginning of this session. Jane said Seth chose not to bother with it tonight.)

[...] She did not tell the Pipers, but she had the whole name in mind by the time the pointer had moved to the letter F. She was quite surprised, and has never had the experience before, although it has been some months since either of us watched others working the board—indeed, since the Seth material began to flow. [...]

[...] She helped me proofread Seth, Dreams, and Projection of Consciousness for Stillpoint Publishing. Later, she helped me proofread the new editions of Seth Speaks and The Nature of Personal Reality that Amber-Allen/New World Library has published. She’s worked as a researcher of Jane’s material for The Magical Approach — the book she has “most dreamed of working on.” Laurel has been Seth’s “metaphysical apprentice,” as she recently put it, for fourteen years now. [...]

[...] At the same time, I wondered often if it was of any use to try publishing Seth books, old or new — why do so, if sales were falling? Maybe people were tired of the Seth material. [...]

In 1993, I saw the culmination of three ventures that I’d been involved in for varying periods of time: Lynda Dahl and Stan Ulkowski, of Seth Network International, published the first quarterly issue of the newly expanded Seth-oriented magazine, Reality Change. (RC, as everyone calls it, was founded by Maude Cardwell in June 1980; she began it as a two-page mimeographed newsletter.) Richard Roberts, of Vernal Equinox Press, published A Seth Reader, a volume consisting of excerpts from six of the Seth books. And Bob Terrio, of Bob Terrio Productions, marketed a video, The Seth Phenomena, in which I discuss Jane’s and my work.

[...] He included Seth material in many issues. [...]

[...] At the same time, she had a lot of material in mind from Seth—on the glass experience; a dream I’d had on August 1, in which I’d found her lying on the floor in the bathroom doorway; and a fairly strong earthquake that had struck south of San Francisco, California, this afternoon. Seth, she said somewhat wonderingly, planned to tie all of these episodes together. [...]

(From here on Seth’s material leads into more generalized information, so it’s presented as the 871st session. [...]

(The following material is from the 871st session.

(At about 3:30 PM last Thursday, Jane participated in a startling experience —one that we hoped Seth would at least mention this evening. [...]

[...] Already those at Ankh-Hermes have been asked to withdraw from sale their shortened version of Seth Spreekt, and to publish a full-length one instead—a very expensive proposition indeed. [...] We’re caught between the economic realities of the situation as far as Ankh-Hermes is concerned, and our own intense desires that translations of the Seth books match the original versions as closely as possible. We fully agree with Seth that changes and distortions are inevitable as the Seth material is moved from English into other languages; we just want those alterations kept to a minimum. [...] And all concerned must wait at least another year before a full-length version of Seth Speaks will be published in the Dutch language.

[...] Considering the eagerness with which we’ve looked forward to having the Seth material published in other languages, and the long waiting periods involved, this situation is frustrating indeed. Many of my notes, some of which contain excerpts of Seth material, have been eliminated. [...] The Appendix in Seth Spreekt is only 11 pages long, chopped down from 67 pages.

During this session hiatus I’ve been spending much time upon a series of letters to the publishers of Seth Speaks in Switzerland and in the Netherlands, as well as to those in charge at Prentice-Hall.¹ Last Saturday night we had a very interesting meeting with a psychologist from New York City. Our visitor taped Seth’s copious material, and is to send us a transcript of it.

Obviously, Seth didn’t follow through on the statement he’d made near the end of the last book session, which we held much earlier this month: “Remind me, for our next session, to wind in a discussion of those subjective entities as they learned how to translate themselves into physical individuals.” However, I didn’t ask him for the material tonight, either. [...] The information in question will be most interesting when Seth does come through with it.)

[...] I told Jane that, once heard, much of Seth’s material had the quality of being so obvious that we in turn seemed to be quite opaque not to have reached the same conclusions ourselves. After considering the alternatives Seth suggested immediately following last break I decided to leave his delivery in place in the session as a guide for the reader; parallels can be drawn with many other situations, I think having nothing to do with art or houses.

[...] She wrote recently: “We regard Seth’s material on counterparts and families of consciousness as excellent explanations — as thematic frameworks that help us perceive and organize facets of our greater reality that are ignored by conventional academic disciplines. Seth’s explanations stand for aspects of reality that usually escape us.

[...] In the meantime, then, Seth’s material in this (737th) session deals only with the house on Foster Avenue, in Elmira, and — as discussed shortly — with Mr. Markle’s house in Sayre, Pennsylvania, since those two places were the ones we were consciously interested in at the moment. Seth made no predictions, about the hill house or any other, nor did we ask him to.

[...] My opening notes for sessions 714–15 each include material on Jane’s psychic library, and Seth himself discussed it in the latter session. Politics, of course, contains extensive material on the same subject (as well as on our house-hunting adventures).

[...] John has witnessed several sessions; with him he brought the first carbon of Volume 1 of the Seth material, which he has been reading. [...] John is also an indefatigable worker at finding people who are willing to devote free time to typing up extra copies of the material, and he had news for us on this score also. [...]

(Leaving, John took with him the first carbon of sessions 24-38, to test out his two female volunteers’ determination in making copies of the Seth material. [...]

(John and Bill, Jane and I engaged in a discussion of free will, and in an effort to make some points I was sure the material covered I again became aware of something that was becoming more obvious all the time: namely, that the material has now reached such a length, and has gone into so many subjects, some lightly and others deeply, that I for one can no longer keep all of it on prompt recall.

My heartiest appreciation for Philip's attempts to have the material typed, and my rather impatient request that Ruburt begin his work of preparing the material for publication.

3. For material and references concerning my Nebene life in the first century A.D., see Session 721, with notes 9 and 12. Seth’s remark here, that “Ruburt was indeed the ‘prostitute’ priestess,” concerns unpublished material we plan to eventually study in depth.

[...] Then Seth uses what I get in the material … Okay: I guess I’m about ready.” [...]

[...] I added that I didn’t think she need worry about readers following Seth’s material — that certainly many others are just as curious as we are about where “Unknown” Reality is going.

(The Seth material to come is presented for these reasons:

Then on October 23 Jane’s creative contentions led to her “attend” material—in which she picked up from Seth that her only responsibility in life is to herself: “Attend to what is directly before you.” Seth told her that she bore no onus to save the world. In relief, Jane wrote a short poem to accompany Seth’s message, then wrote further that she “realized that like many I’d become afraid of faith itself.” I’ve presented this cluster of material in the frontmatter for Volume 1 of Dreams. [...]

(Three months ago, way back on August 13, following the outline she’d written on July 8 for The Magical Approach to Reality: A Seth Book,¹ Jane began work on the first draft for Chapter 1 of that project. [...] Seth reassured her in both sessions. In the first of the two he remarked that “Ruburt is still dealing with spin-off material following or resulting from his sinful-self data….” [...]

“Ruburt is still dealing with spinoff material following or resulting from his sinful-self data,” Seth said, “and this material generally follows the lines of development that are fairly obvious in the poems and notes [he has written] since that time.

Jane smiled after Seth had left us. [...] She knew what material Seth wanted her to type. [...]

9. A note added two months later: In retrospect it’s easy to see that while discussing his ideas of counterparts here, Seth was also preparing us for the families-of-consciousness material he was to start giving in January 1975. [...] In that session Seth was quickly at pains to say that belonging to a certain family of consciousness did not come first in our reality: “Your individuality comes first.”

[...] Someone had made considerable noise while cleaning the halls of the apartment house, also — “… all while Seth wanted me to get that material just right,” Jane said a bit ruefully. [...]

[...] Once we were caught up I’d read her the Seth material received each week on the succeeding Saturday or Sunday until I got back to the twice-weekly routine of transcribing, early next year; I expect to do the last of the Dialogues illustrations late in January 1975.)

2. For some background information on Seth’s basic units of consciousness (CU’s), cells, probabilities, time structures and other material in connection with his delivery here, I suggest reviewing these sessions in Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality: 682–84, 688, and 694.

Actually, Seth has been describing in various ways the indissoluble relationship between consciousness and information (or consciousness and anything else), ever since Jane began holding the sessions over a decade ago. [...] Five of the eight sessions contained material applicable to this note. Seth, in the 18th session, for example:

7. Seth evidently referred to the material he gave on the conscious attributes of information for Chapter 3 of Personal Reality. Note 1 for Session 697, in Volume 1, contains quotations from those comments, as well as a few other references.

9. When Seth mentions reincarnation now, I usually think of a certain delivery of his in Volume 1. After 10:45 in the 683rd session, see the paragraph of material beginning with this phrase: “Reincarnation simply represents probabilities in a time context….” [...]

[...] Let me briefly continue that early Seth material here: “In drawing up his list of so-called natural laws, I have said (in the 16th session) that man decided that what appeared to be cause and effect to him was, therefore, a natural law of the universe. [...]

(“Do you want to deal now with the question about the Dead Sea Scrolls and Yahoshua?” This was in reference to a letter Jane had received on April 12, having to do with Seth’s third-Christ data in The Seth Material.)

[...] We have no way of knowing how long Seth’s reply to a query like Mrs. R’s will be. [...] We ask for a reply, to see if it’s possible to check the material. [...]

[...] Seth finished the session with several pages of material dealing with other matters. [...]

(I recently finished the blue man that Seth refers to. I painted a male in modern garb, but in reality, according to an amused Seth, the subject was a female clairvoyant who lived in Constantinople in the fourteenth century; unconscious distortions in my own perceptions led me to the male figure. Seth has given her the name Ianodiala. [...]

[...] I said before the session that if we got house material I really wanted good answers, that I’d stay out of it as much as possible. …” Jane went into the kitchen, looking for matches. All in all, I thought she was “recovering” quite easily from Seth’s data, and that she was helped here because we’d revisited the hill house today. Every so often someone wants to know about the extent to which we follow Seth’s advice or information, and I suppose a good answer is that we may decide to go along with it if it suits our conscious purposes to do so. Sometimes we don’t agree with what Seth tells us even when we know it’s good counsel. [However, Jane and I freely admit that on occasion we’ve made the wrong choice in deciding to ignore what Seth had to say; in retrospect we’ve seen that he gave out very valid material.]

(Seth had used more than half of Monday’s session to discuss our house hunting in connection with Sayre and Foster Avenue. Some of his related material there had been fairly personal, but we’d left it in place because of its general application. When Seth added the hill house to his list tonight, however, his connecting information about Jane and me was so intimate that we decided to delete parts of it. [...]

[...] She still looked a bit teary, but at the same time I was sure now that we’d steered away from any probable reality involving Foster Avenue — and perhaps Sayre too, I thought, considering Seth’s material at 10:15 tonight.³

[...] Jane proceeded to deliver for Seth a few more paragraphs of house material, here deleted, followed by this exchange.)

(10:31 P.M. Seth’s last remark, which I took to be rather humorous, reflected one of the reasons for Jane’s upset before the session: the conflict she feels between having just book sessions versus obtaining Seth material on at least a few of the other subjects we always have in mind. [...] Seth has given some answers in a couple of sessions, and we want more. Originally I’d planned to present excerpts here from our joint material—but I see now that I have no space in which to do so.

1. Seth’s earliest material on EE (electromagnetic energy) units came through in September and October of 1967; in the Appendix of The Seth Material, see the excerpts Jane presented from sessions 504 through 506. Then in Chapter 20 of Seth Speaks, see Session 581 for April 14, 1971.

[...] Her manner was both funny and understandably sharp when I asked her if she had any questions for Seth tonight. [...]

(“Good evening, Seth.”)

[...] Bantam also wants Seth Material.)

(I personally had one question for Seth. I was rather upset at the way my notes were running so long in some of the book sessions, and wanted Seth’s comment. [...] I needed Seth’s ideas, I thought.

(The following material is from the 704th session.

[...] Not all the sensations involved are pleasant at first, as Seth indicated they might be. [...]

As her psychic abilities began to rapidly grow, following her initiation of the Seth material late in 1963, Jane couldn’t help but become more and more concerned about consciously enlarging her “scope of identity.” [...] Very understandable, then, that Jane, both for herself and for Seth, would write so eloquently about the disparity between her psychic abilities and “the currently scientifically-oriented blend of rationalism,” as Seth describes that quality earlier in this Session Six for The Magical Approach.

[...] In some ways the Seth material has been given credit by the establishment; being taught as university course work, for example. [...]

[...] As she researched Jane’s published and unpublished notes, journals, and books for The Magical Approach, Laurel learned that my wife had originally intended to call this book The Magical Approach: A Jane/Seth Book, and wrote of it as being “a psychic-naturalistic journal.” If Jane had planned to add to Seth’s original sessions, what might she have included? [...] Laurel pointed out a number of forceful passages Jane wrote on cultural acceptance in The God of Jane in 1980 — the same year in which she dictated The Magical Approach for Seth. [...]

[...] You may start bringing in different experiences than you think you are seeking, then materialize your original requirements later on. [...]