“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] In terms of length alone, it soon became obviously impossible to write all of the material for any piece on the date given. [...] I did not look at Seth-Jane’s Dreams itself while writing the essays, in order to avoid having them overly influenced by work in the book. Instead, we want all of this preliminary material to show how we live daily—regardless of how well we may or may not do—with a generalized knowledge of, and belief in, the Seth material.

We could have presented Dreams as is, or at least have avoided mentioning certain less-than-advantageous circumstances surrounding its production by Jane and by Seth, the “energy personality essence” she speaks for while in a trance or dissociated state. [...] Since we’ve always wanted to make sure that our “psychic work” is given within the context of our daily living, I’ve undertaken to present in these essays intensely personal material relevant to the creation of Dreams. (The mechanics of Jane’s still-fascinating trance phenomenon have been described in some detail in the six previous Seth books she’s produced—with my help—and they’ll also be referred to, if briefly, in Dreams.)

Jane appreciates that the dates I’m always giving merely furnish a convenient framework for our material, but she’s hardly enamored of such precise methodology; she understands that it’s my way of doing things, realizes it’s very useful, and goes on from there. I use a similar system in presenting all of the published Seth material. [...]

Seth, then, has finished his work on Dreams. I wrote the original version of the notes for each book session as he delivered it through Jane, and also began collecting other notes and reference material that might be used. [...]

[...] Volume 2 is a massive book, yet I still couldn’t believe all the time — almost exactly five years — that had passed since Jane, Seth, and I began work on it. [...] Naturally we’d been involved in a number of other projects at the same time, as I’ve indicated in my notes for Mass Events, yet for me especially the publication of the two volumes of “Unknown” Reality meant that we had arrived at a certain point in the development and presentation of the Seth material: In those books, through correlating them in a modest way with our previous works, I’d attempted to show the reader just what the three of us had managed to achieve before Seth led us into Psyche — and, as it developed, Mass Events.

1. Just before giving the 861st session last week, Jane received from Seth some intriguing material on the idea that in psychological therapy, the good intents and impulses beneath the client’s emotional and physical hassles should be searched out by the analyst. [...] It was very promising material, she told me, and could help change conventional ideas of therapy. A book could actually be involved — Seth’s next — on “the therapy of value fulfillment.” [...]

[...] They left late enough so that Jane decided to skip the session, even though earlier in the day she’d written notes on material that Seth had mentally informed her he’d cover.

(Tonight, Jane repeated an idea she’d started talking about before holding the 861st nonbook session just a week ago: She thinks Seth is in the process of finishing Mass Events. [...] You know — that material I’ve been telling you about, on therapy and value fulfillment. [...]

(Reading the 3rd session, of December 6/63, John noticed that Frank Watts, Jane and I had all lived together in Mesopotamia in the 4th century B.C. In that life I was a woman, Frank Watts was my sister, and Jane was a brother to us, and named Seth. [...] Seth did not announce his presence until the 4th session. Now John wondered if the Seth mentioned in the 3rd session, page 18, was the same Seth who is now giving us the material.

(John Bradley took with him Volume I of the Seth Material, consisting of the first 15 sessions, first carbon; two friends of his who are professional typists had offered to try copying the material, and John thought that this amount of material, 147 pages, would be sufficient to test their interest and staying power. [...]

I realize that this is somewhat difficult, but when you reread the last two sessions you will understand this material completely. Ruburt is now the result of the Seth that I once was, for I have changed since then. Ruburt represents, and is, a personality formed by that Seth which was myself, by focusing upon and using a peculiar set of attributes and abilities. [...]

[...] Nevertheless, there is no distortion in the particular material which you have been reading. Your Ruburt was, indeed, Seth. [...]

(Seth gave Don Wilbur a few lines of information concerning a job change he was considering, and Don has a copy of this material. Seth told Ann Diebler he could not at this time answer her questions concerning a friend in Newport News, Virginia, because he has not yet established an emotional rapport with her. He did willingly answer many other questions asked by Ann, Marilyn and Don, questions mostly based on the material itself and the concepts involved.

(Jane and I have yet to prepare Seth’s material on the Puerto Rico experiments, for insertion into the record. We have now decided to present Seth’s hits and near misses only, plus Seth’s data on the Washington experiment, in one of the sessions falling due the week after this.

(Apropos of Peggy’s Washington trip, Seth gave predictions when asked to during Friday’s unscheduled session. [...] They accompanied her to Washington, and at Seth’s request she will also make notes while there. There follows a copy of Seth’s material on the trip, as noted down by Peggy:

(Another possibility here is that Jane and Seth can work as a team, since Seth has said often that Jane has abilities of her own. [...] Jane has now begun a book on dreams, to be done concurrently with her book on the Seth material itself.

“Of course, I thought, in ordinary terms the vast potential of the Seth material is fated never to be developed. [...] She could hold sessions 24 hours a day for the rest of her life, and still not exhaust Seth’s potential store of information. We’ve had many indications that his material is multichanneled, as when Jane has felt him ready to discuss any one of a number of subjects on any given occasion. I call that feeling, that awareness, a pale indication of what Seth means with his theory of probable realities—for like probable personalities, the unspoken channels he has available are certainly real whether or not they’re actualized in our physical reality.

“I can envision Seth’s material expanding almost endlessly just on a day-to-day basis, as he deals with events in the lives of Jane and me—and this idea conveys nothing about news of his reactions to and interactions with events on various levels of his own reality, plus other realities he may be able to reach. In Chapter 8 of Dreams, when I asked Seth what he was going to do for the rest of the evening (in our terms), he replied: ‘I am going to refresh myself by diving into some new concepts, for there are new concepts for me also, of course, and I dive into them from many positions all the time as well.’ (See the conclusion of Session 916 for May 14, 1980.) Think of the questions one could ask him relative to just this one statement! [...] But obviously, if Seth did take up every moment of our temporal lives with personal material, all else would be probable.”

[...] It’s not contradictory to note that during August and September, following his regular schedule of twice-weekly sessions, Seth methodically presented some very exciting concepts. So closely do those 13 sessions fit together that it’s most difficult to give excerpts.⁵ Seth’s magical-approach material represents one of his best efforts to help us, as well as others. [...] The title of the new book would be automatic: The Magical Approach to Reality: A Seth Book.

[...] Yet it is, of course, since in it Seth illuminates from still another perspective his concept of value fulfillment.⁸ The session grew out of the encounter we had yesterday afternoon with an unexpected visitor from out of state. Seth hardly mentions the individual involved, however, but instead goes into the subject of mental illness in more inclusive terms. I see many correlations between this evening’s material and that in Session 917 for Chapter 8; there, among other things, Seth had discussed the reasoning mind, the imaginative mind, and schizophrenia. [...]

(This session was held to obtains answers to two questions we had for Seth. Both pertained to Jane’s book on the Seth material, which she is just finishing. [...]

(By this I meant to ask Seth if he planned to dictate a chapter, or at least a few pages, for Jane’s book on the material. [...] But it can be seen that Seth doesn’t directly answer the question.)

There will be more material on the (ELM) units of which we have been speaking. (Jane may use this material in the appendix.) I wanted to tell you that when Ruburt sends off his book we will try to give you more information on the art gallery material.

(Jane said she didn’t really want to speak for Seth’s entity tonight, if that’s what she was trying to do, so I suggested she break it off. Jane said “things were significant in the room,” a phrase she has used before when preparing to speak for Seth’s entity, or Seth II as we sometimes call “him.”)

[...] Seth ‘never promised us a rose garden,’ and we have our good days and our bad days as we encounter life’s daily challenges, joys, adventures, and misadventures. In this large group of sessions, Seth addressed himself to several of our individual problems: Rob’s occasional bouts of indisposition when he felt ‘under the weather’ generally, or was bothered by a variety of minor but annoying symptoms; and my own long-standing troubles with severe stiffness. If Seth didn’t give us a rose garden, he certainly did — and does — try to tell us where the weeds come from! This personal material did help give us a much larger perspective on our various challenges, and we’ve made some inroads in overcoming them. Like anyone else, we have to put Seth’s material to use for ourselves. The thing is, often we’re so busy getting the material and preparing it for publication that we don’t have the time to really study it as our readers do. Perhaps Seth was trying to compensate for that in those private sessions, by taking time out from dictation to help us put the material to greater personal use.”

(“In an important fashion those private sessions parallel his material for Mass Events … material that did make us view the world and current events quite differently than we had earlier. [...] Some of those sessions were devoted to our private beliefs, but usually Seth put such beliefs into the larger social context. [...] Since then, we’ve voiced our hopes often that Seth will go into the entire Jonestown affair in Mass Events; he can’t but help be aware of our wishes! So interspersed in all of that private material are some excellent — and lively — discussions of events current in the world at that time, as well as discourses on connections between creativity and Framework 2, and topics as diverse as psychotic behavior and early civilizations. It was as though Seth were trying to help us break up old associations for once and for all. [...]

[...] During it Seth remarked that he’d “begin book sessions again next Wednesday,” but that didn’t quite work out; he still had a few more nonbook sessions to go. Jane has been looking over his material on Mass Events every so often lately, though, with the idea of going back to work on it. And then, on the very night when she told me that she thought Seth would resume book dictation, Sue Watkins called with news that it was all official now: Today she’d signed her contract with Prentice-Hall for the publication of Conversations With Seth.)

(“Looking over those nine-and-a-half months of sessions now, it’s fairly obvious what Seth was up to. He’d initially given us the material on Frameworks 1 and 2 in private sessions not long after starting Mass Events, as Rob explained in his notes for Session 814. Yet even though Seth also discussed those psychic frameworks to some degree in a dozen sessions for the book, still he finally took that break in dictation to ‘re-educate’ us, looking at our own previous beliefs and those of the world at large in the light of Frameworks 1 and 2.

(Possibly here Seth refers to the results flowing from Dick’s mentioning The Seth Material on his TV and radio shows in the course of talking about his own book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, etc.)

His bubbling enthusiasm was partially responsible for his contracting The Seth Material. [...] He was also not rigid in his ideas, however, and sensed the importance of the material, and as a young editor impressed his boss by his own enthusiasm. [...]

[...] Your position as not being publicity seekers works strongly to your advantage now, as far as Seth Speaks and The Seth Material is concerned. [...]

[...] Telling me about it—we also reread this session—Jane said it would be more than a casual mention of The Seth Material in the article, and that now she could “feel a tremendous amount of energy gathering around” the fact of Dick Bach, us, Seth, etc.

6. Jane covers our York Beach “dancing episode” in Chapter 2 of The Seth Material, and also quotes information Seth gave us on it in later sessions. The mystifying event took place during our vacation in York Beach, Maine, in August, 1963, a few months before Jane began to speak for Seth. [...] In the 9th session for December 18, 1963, Seth explained what we had been up to, and called our creations “fragments of our selves, thrown-off materializations of your own negative and aggressive feelings.” (Naturally, the more Seth told us about the human ability to generate such forms, the more questions we had!) In that 9th session Seth also used his term, “probable self,” for the first time.

Jane quotes Seth’s material from the 12th session much more extensively in Chapter 3 of The Seth Material; see Seth’s analogy involving cubes (realities) within cubes.

[...] Perhaps I’m reinterpreting old memories in the light of Seth’s material here. [...] On several occasions Seth has given very blunt, very perceptive interpretations of the churning relationship involving my parents. That material is too long and complex to excerpt here, but I’d like to treat it separately sometime.

(In the last session, Seth began discussing separate photographs of Jane and me [taken at the ages of 12 and 2, respectively] in connection with his ideas about probable selves. Since we wanted Seth to continue with the same material tonight, we looked the pictures over again while waiting for him to come through. [...]

(This will be the first time Seth has appeared on television since we did some promotional work for The Seth Material after its publication in 1970. At that time Jane spoke for Seth on two occasions from cities in the East. [...] I might add that since Seth launched “Unknown” Reality in February of this year, Jane and I have fulfilled another television commitment, and that she was the subject of a lengthy radio interview. [...]

5. In the last session see the material, with notes 1 and 7, on Einstein, as well as Note 5; in the 684th session the material on the multidimensional activities and fluctuations of Seth’s CU’s (or units of consciousness), electrons, and other such phenomena; and in the 681st session the material, with Note 7 especially, on science, probable atoms, and the basic unpredictability behind all systems of reality. In the same session Seth also comments on Jane’s vocabulary, as he does after break tonight.

See Chapter 15 of Seth Speaks for Seth’s material on the art and technology of the ancient civilization of Lumina (as well as his references to those that came before and after it). [...]

(I thought it very interesting that Seth had talked about subatomic waves and particles in the last paragraph of his delivery tonight. [...] We had briefly discussed Einstein’s work and some allied subjects before tonight’s session, but I hadn’t asked her to give material on physics through Seth.⁵ In her own way, Jane is quite interested in the field, however, and has done a little work in it with scientists. [...]

(Bill and Peggy agreed that Seth’s material on his parents seems to fit them psychologically, although some of the information given concerning Bill’s subconscious feelings toward his father was a surprise to Bill. At one point Seth asked Bill to not say so much when he answered a question, because this led Ruburt to start to actively and consciously consider the material and to make his own interpretations, which could be distorted. Seth also asked Bill not to tell us any more about his family relationships; presumably so that more material Seth came through with in future sessions could be checked with Bill’s knowledge, as in the blue dress and the bookkeeping incidents.

(Right after the session began, Seth showed how Jane’s personal subconscious memories had, during the sitting with the Gallaghers, on August 20, distorted the material we received. [...] Seth mentioned that Jane’s own memories of the shredded-wheat incident should have told her what had happened. [...] Much, Seth said, Jane had picked up telepathically from Bill. [...]

(Seth said he had unfortunately been involved with some other groups on our plane, in seance gatherings. [...] At the same time Seth stated he was not a spirit, although if he materialized in the middle of the floor we would pay more attention and not take him for granted.

[...] The material on the construction of matter was gone over. Seth talked a good deal on the cooperation of all living things in maintaining our universe, and of how it’s so very wrong for civilized human beings to kill. [...]

One can also say that the Seth books are a step farther removed than Jane’s are from the immediacy of life as we conceive of it. Even with the elimination of the Seth element from them, Jane’s own books would still represent a remarkable overall achievement, and had she never given expression to the Seth material I’m sure she would have developed her abilities in ways quite unknown to us now. Within her basic creativity lies the source of Seth as we are to understand him in our temporal reality. Her expression of Seth is an adjunct to that creativity, as he is the first to acknowledge.

[...] I think the Seth material contains some penetrating insights into such questions, but those ideas aren’t nearly well-enough known to help on a national scale. Seth didn’t comment upon the shooting, It wasn’t that he couldn’t, or wouldn’t—but that Jane herself is basically so innocent, so repelled by the violence involved in such episodes, that she often chooses not to go into the subject. I thought she might later in connection with other material, however; this had been the case when Seth discussed the mass suicide at Jonestown, Guyana, in November 1978.¹¹

Amid her incessant questioning as to who or what Seth is—even if he is a master event!—and amid her concerns about leading others astray, Jane added to her journal four days later: “The worst explanation for Seth that I can imagine is that he is the part of me that I can’t express otherwise—making a psychological statement. Since his material is so terrific, why would this be bad? [...] Or leading others to believe in life after death, because the material is so convincing?”

[...] That same day, Seth agreed that her new book idea was a good one. [...] During this time, we had been often rereading Seth’s information on the sinful self as he’d given it on March 11. [See Note 9 for this session.] That material had deeply touched us. The result was that on April 14, the day Columbia landed, Seth initiated a long series of sessions on both Jane’s own sinful self, and that quality in general. The very next evening Jane allowed him to come through with some extremely important material.¹³

Inevitably, however, much had to be omitted from The Way Toward Health as it’s presented here — not Seth’s material, but from Jane’s and my work and notes. [...] We saw that if all of the peripheral material for each session was included, the book would be very long. (I had a number of personal experiences and insights that I thought enhanced concepts of the Seth material, for example.) But what to cut, when to stop? [...]

During those 21 months in the hospital, Jane, Seth, and I said much about her physical/psychic condition, and I recorded it all in my homemade shorthand as best I could under often very stressful conditions. [...] For weeks after her admittance in April, I didn’t know if Jane would ever do any “psychic” work again, but three months later she surprised me by beginning a series of dialogues similar to the “world-view” material she’d produced for her books on the psychologist and philosopher William James, and the artist Paul Cézanne. [...] She concluded it in September 1983, then over the next four months delivered a series of 71 mostly short, mostly personal Seth sessions. [...]

When Jane began delivering the Seth material in 1963, I became very conscious of the record we’d leave, not with Seth but concerning our private lives. [...]

The answers to such questions that Jane, Seth, and I arrived at are in this book. [...] Seth did help her, many many times over the years. [...] Seth still helps my wife, I’m sure. [...] Because of certain dreams I believe that even portions of my own entity (Seth calls me Joseph) are joining in. Well, why not, since as Seth describes reality, everything exists at the same “time?” Tricky concepts and questions to wrestle with, I know, and sometimes contradictory. [...]

We didn’t realize either that the emergence of the Seth voice completed the psychic structure through which we would receive the Seth Material, and through which Seth’s personality would express itself. [...] Much later, Seth told us that this psychic energy can be translated into sound like this, or it can be used for other purposes. Now when Seth gives clairvoyant material, for example, the voice is seldom loud. [...]

[...] I knew that he was concerned about me, but also tremendously interested in the material Seth had been giving. Besides this, as Seth, I had been extremely active, making funny remarks now and then to break up pages of serious monologue. [...] While we were talking, Rob had wondered aloud about the meaning of time; when we resumed, Seth started discussing this question.

Rob asked several other questions, and the two of them, Rob and Seth, chatted back and forth for three quarters of an hour. About the voice, Seth said: “Ruburt’s voice is an experiment. [...] Now and then old Frank Withers comes through simply because he was the latest independent materialization and is used to taking things upon himself. [...]

Again, on reading the notes we were fascinated by the material, particularly since Seth told us that he was going to explain these Inner Senses more fully, and teach us how to use them. [...]

(John said it was all right for the personal material to be included in this record, and it is a good example of the way Seth handles such data. [...] Most of the family material is self-explanatory. [...] Seth has advised patience here; John said this is difficult for him but that he is carefully considering the advice. [...]

[...] These were the poetry book and the first section of her book on the Seth material. This material is discussed in the 234th session, among others.

[...] John’s presence usually calls forth some telepathic and/or clairvoyant material from Seth, and so it developed this evening. The form of the material is a little different however this time, and involves John and his wife for the most part.

[...] The object is the insurance slip for the manuscripts of Jane’s poetry book, and the first section of the Seth material, mailed to her publisher on February 10,1966. This material is discussed to some extent in the 234th session, among others.

(After the end of break at 11:17, Seth came through with a fairly long block of material on another matter. He closed out the session at 11:43 P.M. with this line about the questions I had waiting for him: “I bid you a fond good evening — and I know when your material will fit.” [...]

[...] I reminded Jane of the two questions I’d put off from Monday’s abbreviated session, but Seth made only a brief reference to them at the end of tonight’s material.)

[...] I anticipated hearing what Seth would say about some of the probable paths since taken by the photograph’s three subjects. I’ve had the question in mind ever since Seth discussed separate, childhood snapshots of Jane and me in the same terms during the first session for “Unknown” Reality. [...] In that session, Seth told us that the 12 year old Jane in the photo under discussion was to become probable to the one I eventually met and married.] Beside whatever Seth could tell us about her parents, I was curious to know whether the Jane who was shown at the age of 3 might be — or was destined to become — another probable Jane.⁶)

1. Seth’s evocative material on dream images reminded me of an equally evocative poem about the dreaming self that Jane wrote in 1965, a year and a half or so after the sessions began. [...]

[...] Our main goal in wanting a home for the Seth material—or for a lifework, really—is one of preservation for future use. We don’t think that Yale can have much of an idea of what’s involved with Jane’s abilities, or the subject matter of the Seth material. [...]

(Before the session Jane read over the letter from D. R. Moorcroft, the professor of physics who’d written her such a fine letter on April 3. She divided the letter into questions; Seth may discuss some of them tonight. [...] Seth does refer to the first question Jane had noted, and that material is also presented as the 849th session, as well as being included here.

(What I’m trying to do is to let the information Seth has given in the last several deleted sessions for me, starting with that for April 4, sink in so that I can achieve a synthesis of it all both consciously and unconsciously. I think the material is very perceptive, and that I may have begun achieving some kind of equanimity between the two men, or opposing sets of belief, that Seth so aptly described in the deleted session for April l8. [...]

[...] They want the Seth material and related papers. [...] [Jane is not in favor of public accessibility at this time.] LD explained a few things, suggesting among them a committee, perhaps, to screen qualified applicants to the material. [...]

2. I didn’t finish this little note until June, 1973: Seth discusses probabilities in Chapters Fourteen and Fifteen, and reincarnation in Chapter Nineteen, although both subjects are mentioned elsewhere in the book. Also see The Seth Material and Seth Speaks.

(We’ve been especially interested in such material since Seth referred to the “deaths” of atoms and molecules in the 625th session in Chapter Five, but we haven’t asked for more detail because the subject matter is somewhat outside the scope of this book. [...] When Seth finishes Personal Reality we plan to ask him to reconcile such data from our world with the root assumptions, or basic agreements, in his own reality.

(Those who care to might see Seth’s discussion of internal electromagnetic sound and light values in the 625th session referred to earlier, as well as his material on EE [electromagnetic energy] units in Chapter Twenty of Seth Speaks.)

[...] Although we had a few shorter sessions on different matters during the holiday season, this is the first material Seth has given on his book since December 18 — and as he resumed dictation on Chapter Seven so easily, we were reminded that he’s impervious to our ideas of time.

(Earlier today Jane and I had been discussing how best to go about writing her projected book on the Seth material. [...] We decided we would like Seth’s help with this problem, and so expected to hear him speak this evening.

[...] She said that at the end of the session, just before she left trance, she got a message that she would hear from the publisher Prentice-Hall, within three days concerning the prospectus they have for the book on the Seth material.

To think in such a way could be to limit the good the material can do, and the numbers and kinds of people it can reach. Like action, the material moves out in all directions. [...] There will be, at some time, those interested in a study in depth of the material; and as Ruburt’s students have seen to it that their need is satisfied, so will these people see to it. [...]

My personality is what makes the material unique, for it is information sifted through an individual that is unique from all others. Ruburt therefore should not attempt to disentangle the material from my personal characteristics. [...] But he should not present my ideas as if they come from thin air, for this is to rob the material.

[...] The stories by Peg Gallagher dealt with the origin of the Seth material, Seth himself, and quotes from various sessions as well as the way the material is gathered, etc. The photos were of Jane and of the painting I did, in oil, of Seth.

(Strictly speaking, these episodes could be called seances, since they were given by Jane herself rather than Seth. The math material meant little to Roger, and we have no way, as yet, of checking out the California data. [...] We didn’t insist that Seth discuss this material this evening, instead merely saying we had much to learn here.

(Much work went into this presentation, and a response has been materializing through phone calls, personal visits, and the mail. The series was built around the acceptance of the first book of the Seth material by Prentice-Hall.

[...] I said I thought it was a contact session, as Seth calls them, meaning that he was present with us at this time, rather than having given Jane the material earlier. [...]