“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I’m tremendously pleased that Rick Stack, the proprietor of New Awareness Network Inc., is publishing the eight-to-ten-volume set of The Early Sessions. These books consist of the first 510 “sessions” that my wife, Jane Roberts, delivered for that well-known “energy personality essence”, Seth, after she began speaking in a trance or dissociated state in December 1963. They cover a six-year period between November 20,1963 and January 19,1970.

Having this set published for the record is something I’ve long wanted to see take place, and Rick’s dedicated interest and time make it possible. (I told him more than once along the way that he’d better think twice—and more!— before taking on the job of publishing eight-to-ten books.) Jane died on September 5,1984, at the age of 55. When she was close to death she asked me to publish all of her work. In my grief and shock I agreed, without understanding what a challenge that labor of love was to entail. I’m still working at it 12 years later!

With the loving help of others I made several attempts over the years to publish various portions of Jane’s work, but with little success, for a variety of reasons. Also, even though I’d been so intimately involved with the Seth material from the very beginning, for example, I didn’t fully comprehend the volume of just the session material that we’d accumulated over a total of 21 years. Let alone the bulk of Jane’s other work: her poetry, novels both published and unpublished, her other published books, an unfinished autobiography, the records of her ESP class sessions, her journals and paintings, her singing in musical trance language, Sumari, her never-ending correspondence. My wife was—and is, I know, for I’m sure that she still lives—the most creative person I’ve ever met, and through her extraordinary abilities she’s left a body of work that I regard as a legacy of inquiry about our understanding of ourselves and our reality. In my opinion its “true value” is only now coming to be better acknowledged. Rick’s publication of The Early Sessions, then, is a very important advance in the marvelous journey of discovery that, I think, each one of us is inevitably involved in, that each one of us has chosen to create, in whatever way and for whatever purposes.

These eight to ten volumes are meant to show Jane’s and my growth—in the most literal way—but always that of my wife, above all else. From the start we felt that if our “psychic” work had value it should be presented as is, within all of its human connotations; not only its great successes, but with its gropings and mistakes, its questions and learnings along the way. Not edited or prettied up, but as is. Real. I still feel that way. These 510 sessions, then, are exact copies from the verbatim transcripts I made in my homemade shorthand while Jane spoke for Seth; I added notes and comments while typing the material after each session. Over half a dozen years we filed the typed sessions in 44 three-ring binders. The sessions in one of the volumes published by Rick are accompanied by my drawings of the objects used in the series of “envelope tests” we conducted, both for ourselves and long-range with a well-known scientist, over some 11 months.

[...] The two volumes are to be published at the same time in 2001 by Rick Stack, the proprietor of New Awareness Network, Inc. Rick has of course published the first six volumes of The Early Sessions.

[...] As soon as Rick Stack finishes publishing The Early Sessions (probably with Volume 9, it seems at this time), we plan to launch the Personal Sessions series. [...] I’m proud to be involved in this work with Rick and his wife, Anne Marie O’Farrell, who is my literary agent. [...]

[...] Rick Stack was one of her students, with friends often making the weekly 400-mile-plus round trip from New York City to our apartment in upstate Elmira, NY. [...] Jane and I used to marvel at their endurance.) Rick recorded and has produced many audio tapes of Jane and Seth speaking in those classes; at this time he’s also producing an additional group of tapes. [...]

[...] So trust yourselves, and trust your love and your dreams (to Rick, Sheri, and Van Zandt, looking at Rick), and tell your students I said R-A-Y!!!! [...]

[...] For peace is active (to Sheri, Rick and Van Zandt.) And so if there is any message that I have for your students, as usual it is not a quiet one. [...]

(Rick talked about a suggestion for a dream from the Gates of Horn, and that he felt his dream had related to the City. [...]

([Rick:] Seth, this is a little changing the subject just a bit, but I’ve been very interested about your comments about the dream art scientists and mental physicists as being some of the careers that I have been interested in.

For some time now Rick Stack and I have discussed a most intriguing project: the private printing, by Rick, of the complete transcripts of those first 510 sessions that Jane held before the publication of The Seth Material in 1970. [...]

[...] She’s married to Rick Stack, a writer, publisher, and lecturer involving things psychic; he too was a member of ESP class. [...]

(Then Rick Stack—in April 1973.)

Do I think it a “coincidence,” then, that I received the page proofs, or galleys, to check for Volume 1 of The Personal Sessions from publisher Rick Stack on September 5, 2002, when Jane died on the same day 18 years ago? [...]

Thus, I opened up several years ago to ask Rick to publish the nine volumes of The Early Sessions through his New Awareness Network, Inc. [...]

[...] When I finish these volumes of personal sessions I’ll be publishing with Rick Stack’s New Awareness Network the transcripts of many of those always hilarious, incredibly active, crowded and loud meetings: full of Seth sessions, member dialogues and repartees and questions that erupted in those weekly classes that Jane held in our apartment’s small living room. [...]

[...] Those 510 sessions have now been published in nine volumes by Rick Stack of New Awareness Network, Inc. [...]