“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] Since the first session on Seth’s book (the 679th) was held — and before we knew it was a book — I’ve been getting material on it in my sleep after each session. [...] The material was on probabilities. [...]

[...] Each time as I lay down again, the material started coming. So the last time I said: ‘Now, look, Seth, if you want to take me to some of these probabilities, great; with you leading the way; but my consciousness is having a hell of a time handling whatever it is we’re doing.’ Then I fell asleep and the material stopped.”

“Toward the end of the material (in the second statement) I briefly thought the Seth level might be involved, but the wording didn’t come through as automatically and smoothly as it does with Seth, and I didn’t feel his … personality. [...]

(As she often has following recent sessions, after the 685th session Jane discovered herself delivering Seth material in the sleep state. [...]

(I did this because in the last session Seth said he would resume his discussion of theoretical material at any point we chose. [...] Jane was tired this evening, and said, “If Seth can get anything out of me tonight he’ll be doing good.” [...]

(Seth calls Jane “Ruburt” during trances, and also “he,” referring then to the sum of Jane’s reincarnations. The halt, above, refers to Jane’s laying aside the book for Doubleday for the moment, and her decision to begin work on a book on the Seth material itself.)

(Shortly before the session I showed Jane copies I had made of material Seth gave very early in 1964—just after the sessions began; the nine Inner Senses, taking up nine typed pages, and the eleven Basic Laws of the Inner Universe, taking up seven typed pages.

I am the Seth that I say I am, but I am also more. The Seth personality that is a part of me is the portion that can most clearly communicate with you. [...] My reality includes the Seth reality.

In this particular period, we had Seth and the Seth Material only — twenty-six sessions — and thus far, no evidential material at all; there was nothing to go on except our experience and faith in ourselves. [...]

[...] Whether or not he and Seth were friends in a past life, they became good friends in this one. Some excellent evidential material was to be obtained through sessions with Mark several years later. He was to recall Seth’s warning to cut down on drinking because of his predisposition to gout; he came down with gouty arthritis.

When your training is much further advanced, we may be able to take certain shortcuts, Seth continued. It is difficult for me to have to string this material out in words and for you to record it. You see, it is possible, in theory, for you to directly experience a concept-essence of the material in any given session. [...]

[...] In it, Seth assured us that the sessions were constructive and made many comments quoted in The Seth Material about the nature of the subconscious, repeating that he was an independent personality.

1. For more extensive material on Seth Two, see Chapter Seventeen of The Seth Material, and Chapter Twenty-two of Seth Speaks. In the latter Seth tells us: “Seth Two stands relatively in the same position to me as I stand to the woman [Jane] through whom I am now speaking.”

[...] And I can see Seth’s portrait on the back cover.” She pointed over her right shoulder to where the painting — which is reproduced in The Seth Material — hangs on our living room wall just in back of her rocker.

2. Jane referred here to the deleted part of tonight’s session, and Seth’s discussion therein of the work we are to do in translating early Speaker material: “The Speaker manuscripts are in your future, and will involve as I told you considerable work — a labor of love.” [...] Also consult Chapter Seventeen in Seth Speaks.

(It’s supposed to express my views of the Seth experience, and how it has influenced or changed my ideas on art, life, and so forth. Then, as Jane told me about all of this, she announced that Seth was coming through right away — a most unusual procedure as far as our regular sessions are concerned. [...]

[...] I hadn’t suggested that Seth come through, so we could see what she’d produce otherwise. “Well,” she commented, “I gave the material while I was in an altered state of consciousness, but I don’t know where it came from. It seems Seth-like, but also really strange. [...] Maybe I’m opening up now so that I can get part of the information this way, as well as through Seth. [...]

[...] This part of the article is approximately in line with the material Jane came through with some hours later. Her material, however, wasn’t influenced by the news story, for just about a year ago Seth-Jane delivered a session for Personal Reality on the mixing of animal and man: the 648th for March 14, 1973, in Chapter 12. [...] But then, for some years Seth has been reiterating that even in our terms there is no well-defined evolutionary path leading from our ancient state to our present one.)

[...] Aside from the question of whether “evolution” in ordinary linear terms has been scientifically proven [concerning which point Jane and I have many reservations], we were drawn to the article because we thought its “factual” information might eventually supplement some of Seth’s material for “Unknown” Reality. [...]

[...] Then, as we made ready to retire, Jane announced that she was “getting” information on the subject of ancient man — but not necessarily from Seth. [...] We were both tired, but I wondered if this could turn out to be an episode like the one she’d experienced before the last session, when she dictated material on the various neurological actions, or speeds, that she sensed. [...]

No sooner did I sit down than such a rich vein of material opened that I could hardly write fast enough to get it all down; and it began where my earlier ideas had ended off. I was being given many of the subject headings for — Seth’s next book, even as I was writing the Introduction for this one! Behind each heading or subject, I sensed realms of information available to Seth, but not (in usual terms) to me. Yet there had been an earlier moment just before the onrush of material when I sensed an odd psychological threshold, a certain accelerated state, that in this case at least signaled the intersection of Seth’s thoughts and mine. Then there was a brief point of psychological rest, an almost neutral psychological platform in which Seth’s outline began to emerge.

[...] That statement is one of the cornerstones of Seth’s material, stated almost from the beginning of our sessions and emphasized throughout his books. In Mass Events, though, Seth goes further, maintaining that our private impulses are meant to provide the impetus for the development of our own abilities in a way that will also contribute to the best interests of the species and the natural world as well. [...] Seth maintains that we can’t trust ourselves while distrusting our impulses at the same time. [...] What Seth is really saying here is that our impulses are meant to help us create our own realities on a personal basis in a way that will enhance both our private lives and our civilizations.

While Seth was dictating The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, for example, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident occurred; and had the affair turned into a disaster, our Chemung County would have been used to house refugees. Many spectacular national events have happened, of course, since our first sessions took place late in 1963, but Seth seldom mentioned such issues, and then only in answer to our own questions. [...] For that reason he examines the public arena, and devotes a good deal of material to Three Mile Island and to the Jonestown mass suicides as well. Both situations occurred as Seth was dictating this book, and while they are contemporary, both cases are classic in their implications.

While Seth was dictating Mass Events, for example, another of our cats (Billy) died. Seth was discussing the Three Mile Island accident, but he left off book dictation for a while because we felt so badly, and gave us some excellent material on animal consciousness before and after death — because “tragedies” come in all shapes and sizes, and the most domestic events of our days offer Seth opportunities to comment on life itself.

But naturally, I told Jane recently — again — I chose to become involved with the whole Seth phenomenon in the most intimate ways. I did so because I knew from its very beginning (in late 1963) that this process of discovery with Seth was more than worth it. [...] I added that I’d certainly choose to do the same thing again, and that I hoped to stay involved with the Seth books indefinitely. Granted that Seth’s material may “only” be bringing into our conscious awareness knowledge we already possess and use on other levels, still it’s a fine thing that his material makes us aware of that inner comprehension — and so new dimensions of consciousness become available to us. [...]

3. Seth’s material on individual creativity at once reminded me of a certain passage of his in the private, or deleted, portion of the 580th session for April 12, 1971. [...] (The regular part of the 580th session, incidentally, was for a book, too: Chapter 20 of Seth Speaks.) I like the following quotation so much that I’ve made copies of it for us to keep where we can refer to them — in my case, pinned up on a wall in my studio. This little affair is a typical example of how something good can get lost in the constantly growing mass of Seth material; even with our attempts at indexing, it’s very difficult to keep track of single paragraphs like this:

(The following isn’t dictation, of course, but concerns instead a very vivid dream Jane had the day before yesterday, and Seth’s interpretation of it this evening. We’re presenting that dream material here because it contains elements of general interest, and covers points some readers have touched upon in their letters to Jane [and Seth]. [...]

[...] When I say I’m the author of the Seth material she becomes upset, saying that they don’t accept it. [...]

(The first time I read her the session she fell asleep when I got to the Seth material, so after she came awake with a start I read it to her again. [...]

[...] Seth’s opening remarks were undoubtedly in response to my own remarks at the close of yesterday’s session, when I’d written that he often didn’t follow through, as promised, on material.)

(4:47 p.m. Seth’s material was reassuring, of course, and I believed it. [...]

(And no matter what Seth says, I’d still like some material on the extremes of Jane’s behavior to her fears of ridicule, guilt, being attacked — the whole bit. [...]

(The material in these recent excerpts rather prepared us for Seth’s introduction of counterparts, then, in Session 721. In ESP class the next evening [on November 26], Seth began contending with some of the questions that instantly arose as a result of his new material. [...] Speaking strongly and humorously, Seth immediately took over the discussion.

[...] In Chapter 1 of The Seth Material Jane described how we began these sessions [on December 2, 1963] through our use of the Ouija board. During the first three sessions the material came from a Frank Withers — who, it developed in the 4th session, was one of the “personality fragments” making up the Seth entity, or whole self. Just before Seth announced his presence to us in that same session, Frank Withers spelled out a remark through the board that meant little to Jane and me at the time: “One whole entity may need several manifestations, even at simultaneous so-called times.”

6. Perhaps I should have briefly discussed it in Volume 1, but ever since Seth originally gave his “Joe, Jane, Jim, and Bob” material (as I call it) in the 683rd session, I’ve wondered about possible connections between the probabilities described in that session and our own reality: How much of our species’ distorted, intuitive knowledge of those probable realities may appear as myth and oddity in our camouflage universe? [...] Considering our personal lack of conscious knowledge about androgyny and such related concepts at the time, Jane and I think it most interesting that Seth came through with that particular material in the 683rd session.

(Seth’s material on counterparts did make us wonder about Jane’s and his earlier uses of the word and its concepts. [...] Seth also used the term in its correct sense.⁷

(After Seth had answered questions from some of the others present, Jane came out of trance and we discussed what had been said … eventually getting into the question of whether or not Seth’s ideas were “old” or “new.” Several people said they thought his material was old, given many times before and forgotten. Others thought it was new, or at least totally original with the Seth material as such.¹⁰ Then Seth returned:)

The question of Seth’s originality intrigues many who write. Even as I worked on this note Jane received a most enthusiastic letter of approval from a young woman who had just read Seth Speaks and Volume 1. To paraphrase a few lines: “Why isn’t the whole world reverberating with these fantastic ideas? I’m stunned by the material … I can’t understand how it took me so long to even hear of the Seth books….”

(Seth’s material here in the 724th session, given on December 4, 1974, at once reminded me of an informal session he’d held on a Friday evening some 10 months ago. [...] Some of those present were members of Jane’s ESP class; all had heard Seth speak at one time or another.

In turn, the young lady’s letter reminded me of certain passages Seth had delivered in the 34th session for March 11, 1964. I asked him why the material he was giving wasn’t common knowledge to most people. Seth replied:

3. Following Seth’s material in these paragraphs, then, there are of course a number of other Janes and Robs busily living out their lives in a cluster of associated probable realities — and all of those Janes and Robs are just as real to Seth as we are. [...] It’s a somewhat chastening one, I said to Jane, joking, since it means that from Seth’s viewpoint we could be just two more individuals.

(I read to Jane again the three questions I’d noted down for Seth during break in Monday’s session. As I suspected he might do, Seth began this evening’s session by dealing with the second one. Not all of his material tonight is given over to questions, however; much of the rest of it, covering matters other than those relating to “Unknown” Reality, is deleted.)

2. See the material on Seth’s concept of simultaneous time as given in the concluding notes for Session 724. [...] Seth: “While I am not affected by time on your plane, I am affected by something resembling time on my plane … It is therefore still a reality of some kind to me.” [...]

7. In Session 594 for the Appendix of Seth Speaks, see Sue’s material on how she sensed Jane’s and Seth’s “speeds” — as well as her own.

(Much of tonight’s private material is the kind that eventually appears in Jane’s “own” works, such as Adventures, or is translated in her poetry. [...] “Ruburt,” Seth commented, “is just beginning his own dream endeavors, which could not seriously start until he learned to have faith in his own being.” [Appendix 11 contains excerpts from The Wonderworks, the paper Jane wrote almost two weeks ago on Seth, dreams, and the creation of our reality. In my notes for The Wonderworks I described her own recent dream series — which still continues, by the way.] And: “In our case,” Seth said a bit later, “Ruburt almost ‘becomes’ the material he receives from me. If certain other beneficial alterations occur, and further understanding on Ruburt’s part, we may be able to meet at other levels of consciousness — in the dream state, when he is not cooperating in the production of our book material.” For Jane has never met Seth, face to face, you might say, in a dream. [...]

(Nor is the biologist’s chaos the same thing as Seth’s “unpredictability.” As Seth tells us in the 681st session in Section 1: “Science likes to think that it deals with predictable action. [...] In connection with this, we suggest the reader study especially Seth’s material from 10:00 to 10:36 in the 681st session.)

4. Chapters 9 and 10 in Seth Speaks contain much information on dreams. For material on the classes held at after-death training centers, see in particular the 537th session in Chapter 9. While out of body during the sleep state, some people from our reality, Jane among them, assist those who have just died in adjusting to their various new environments. And from Seth in the 536th session: “… I had spent many lifetimes acting as [such] a guide under the tutorship of another in my daily sleep states.”

(1. At the end of the paragraph of material begun at 10:35, where Seth touched upon the “withinness of consciousness”: I thought his data there echoed Jane’s own, as she recorded it in The Wonderworks.

As for the question of distortions in the material, and the obvious contradictions in the early sessions as far as dates, etc., are concerned: The reasons for these are dealt with by Seth as the material unfolds. [...] As Seth has often said, the material will furnish its own evidence, more and more emphatically as time goes on.

It might be interesting to note that with the rather generous average of 3 hours per session, for 43 sessions, the material in this book was collected in about 129 hours. (This includes a few sessions other than the Seth material.) There are 168 hours in a week.

Now even when Jane delivers an answer via Seth that may be five typewritten pages long, she never repeats herself, loses track of what she is saying, uses the words “uh,” “er,” etc., or changes in any way what she had said. Time alone would not permit any tinkering with the material. [...] It is as though Jane, in giving the material, is reading from an invisible script, so sure and straightforward is her delivery. [...]

At first when she began dictating Seth’s answers to my questions, Jane would hear the words within, then repeat them aloud so I could write them down. Now she does not hear the material beforehand, but simply speaks it out, literally and consciously unaware of what she is going to say from one word to the next. [...]

Seth began talking about dreams and related subjects from the time these sessions began over 11 years ago. His material led Jane to do some excellent work with dreams on her own. See, for example, chapters 4 and 5 in The Coming of Seth, and Chapter 14 in The Seth Material. Actually, Seth and Jane dream data run through all of the books those two have produced so far, either singly or together.

[...] At 9:15, as we sat waiting, she had her first intimation from Seth that a session would actually take place. “And it’ll be on the book … I’m not used to being so relaxed beforehand, though …” What developed was a very short session, and contrary to her expectations, Seth devoted half of it to Jane herself. I had two questions prepared, both growing out of material in “Unknown” Reality, but had to lay them aside until next time.)

[...] As stated, Seth returned after break with a discussion of the reasons for Jane’s excellent state of relaxation. Most of his material is deleted here, but I can write that her situation was tied in to her work with the challenges presented by her physical symptoms [as described in Note 8 for the 679th session, in Section 1]. [...] In the personal part of this session, then, Seth explained how her very beneficial state of ease “now began in a dream state last night, was further accelerated this morning, and further so in the relaxation just before the session…. [...]

[...] On Friday, however, while in an altered state of consciousness, she tuned into some material on Seth, dreams, and other species of consciousness; she calls it The Wonderworks, and excerpts from it are presented as Appendix 11.

(I repeat that when Seth discusses evolution his meaning differs considerably from the scientific one — which, with various modifications, is even accepted by a number of religious thinkers. As I show at the end of this appendix, Seth allows for a much greater range of simultaneous origins; in our reality these imply growth and development out of that “basic” group of species for the most part, with multidimensional purposes operating inside an enhanced time scheme that includes probabilities, reincarnation, counterparts,²² precognition, and other concepts, meanings, and beliefs. [...] Probabilities aside, when Seth talks about cells [or their components] recombining as parts of plant or animal forms, as he does in the 705th session, Jane and I don’t take that to mean the evolution, or alteration, of one species into another — but that a unity of consciousness pervades all elements in our environment, whether “alive” or “dead.” With the concept of probabilities in mind, however, much of the “thrust for development and change” that Seth also mentions as existing inside all organisms, could just as well take place in those other realities. Early in this appendix, I described how Seth continually built upon material that he’d given before, and that processes of correlation between old and new resulted. At this time, my ideas here represent a correlation between Seth’s material on evolution in the 705th session [which led to this appendix], and his later statements on origins, referred to above. [...] And behind all, Seth insists upon the condition that each of us chose to experience this camouflage reality within this historical context.

(Over a year later Jane supplemented such remarks by Seth with some trance material of her “own”; see Appendix 6 in Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality. [...] As I noted at the beginning of this appendix, the Seth material is still incomplete, and new information requires constant correlation with what has come before. Jane’s own material — including whatever she comes up with in the future — ought to be integrated with Seth’s, also, and eventually we hope to find time to do this. [...] [I can add that just as Jane supplemented Seth’s material on early man, he in turn has added to hers in a kind of freewheeling exchange; his information is presented later in this appendix.]

(This kind of material from Seth is deceptively simple, but upon reflection it can be seen to offer much. [...] Undoubtedly Seth has much more to say on the subject, and we hope to eventually obtain that information. Certainly individual and mass beliefs will be involved [along with the natural and unnatural guilt Seth discussed in the sessions making up Chapter 8 of Personal Reality]. I’d say that just understanding the complicated relationships between mass beliefs and illness alone, for example, will require much material from Seth and much time invested upon our parts.

(Seth material on evolution is presented twice in the 582nd session for Chapter 20 of Seth Speaks — not only in the session proper, but from an ESP class delivery given a few days later, on April 27, 1971. In class, Seth discussed Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution,⁷ and that material, some of which wasn’t published in the 582nd session is the source for my second group of excerpts:)

(This evening after supper, while busy with other material, Jane received the thought that it was time to begin work on Book One of The Seth Material, a project we had discussed sometime before vacation. [...] She came to the studio to tell me this, and that she also received the thought, evidently from Seth, that Donald Wollheim, her editor at Ace Books, could or would write the introduction for Book One.

(For other narcotics material that has developed since Seth made the prediction, see the notes on page 170.

(This morning while I was at work, John Bradley stopped by briefly while on a hurried business trip to give Jane some information relating to a prediction of a narcotics scandal that Seth had predicted for Elmira in the 63rd session, of June 17. [...] Seth stated the scandal was due within three months.

(In the 68th session Seth mentioned a rowboat with a symbol. [...] His acquaintance wore a cap with an anchor symbol on it, although we do not regard this as being what Seth referred to.

Indeed, Seth’s material on the magical approach was so fascinating that by the time he finished Dreams I’d already put together large portions of it in a separate book, even if much of it was personal. Not only that, but those “magical” sessions had naturally developed into another series, this time on a portion of the personality Seth called “the sinful self”—mine as well as that of others—and those sessions had in turn led me to produce many pages of material directly from my own sinful self. [...] Ironically, then, in the midst of my own half-conscious withdrawal I’d been giving birth to not only Seth’s Dreams, but several other intriguing long-range concepts. [...]

[...] Seth-Jane came through with that little session five days ago. One might say that this morning Jane continued it in her own session, exploring especially Seth’s opening material. At first she tried to do it as best she could through writing: Painfully, holding her pen awkwardly, she spent over an hour recording the first four paragraphs—even then, after checking our records, I added to her work material about dates and sequences.)

After the session I began to wonder what Jane’s “sinful self” would have to say now, in comparison to the material she’d received from it in June 1981. [...] I’d grown very angry as the material unfolded—angry at that portion of Jane’s psyche for clinging so tenaciously to such a set of beliefs, for whatever reasons, and angry at myself for not understanding any better than she did their extent and depth, and just how damaging they could be in ordinary terms. I’d also been reminded of material Seth himself had given a few weeks earlier, in a very important private session on April 16: “Many of Ruburt’s beliefs have changed, but the core belief in the sinful self has been very stubborn. [...]

It could hardly have been accidental, then, that beginning on June 17, 1981, our deep need led to Jane’s spontaneous production of her own sinful-self material. The way had been illuminated by Seth himself in his private sessions, with his discussions of her sinful self and related challenges: Those sessions, the publication of the two books, Jane’s personal sinful-self material and her worsening physical situation, all combined to serve as a complex trigger. [...] I presented their beginning in the notes for Session 931, in Chapter 9 of Dreams. I repeat that material here but add considerably more to it. [...]

Seth agreed, and devoted one entire class to the session. [...] In a way, it is not the kind of in-depth discussion Seth would give in one of our private sessions, but it contains an excellent thumbnail description of his theories on personality, for those who have no previous knowledge of the Seth Material. [...]

That night Seth was just beginning his material on personality as action. The ideas he presented are basic to his overall theories of identity, and since he deals with some of the characteristics of consciousness, they are also a basis for later material on the God concept.

[...] Seth was at his best: smiling, often breaking up serious material with a few light jokes or comments. [...]

Seth ended this discussion by outlining various ways to develop awareness of the inner self. This material will be given in a later chapter. [...]

[...] One of the experiments she listed in the book for the reader to try led, of course, to the development of the Seth material in her own case. Thus the material will be an integral part of the ESP book.

(In the 92nd session, of September 28, 1964, Seth predicted the sale of this specific book by name. [...] This material can be shortly checked out. [...]

(Seth has predicted sale of the ESP book, and of the material itself many times. [...]

[...] She wondered when, if ever, Seth would allow her to resume. [...] Jane then received the information, she believes from Seth, to the effect that she might soon be allowed to resume psy-time, but only for fifteen-minute periods, and during the evening when I would be home with her.

(This material is deleted from the 584th session for May 3, 1971. It grew out of Seth’s answers to a couple of questions I asked for Chapter 20 of Seth’s own book. They had to do with Seth speaking through Jane in her lifetime; with my help, etc.

He thinks basically that it is, and he accepts the basic principles of the work—that is, the Seth material. [...] He accepts the source of the material as beyond his usual self. If he were not committed to the material he would have ceased the sessions long ago. [...]

(“When The Seth Material was published and we went on tour: did this revive or intensify his fears about leading people astray?”)

In the beginning, if you recall, he made little effort to have the material published, or even to deal with the material itself in those terms. [...]