“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Seth’s reference to the members of ESP class concerned the part many of them have begun playing in helping us answer the mail. With three Seth books on the market now, the number of letters Jane receives weekly has increased considerably, and evidently will continue to grow. [...]

In class yesterday evening, Seth first came through with some very earthy material that’s presented as Appendix 24. Then Jane read her notes on strands of consciousness, which — I can add later — also found their way into Chapter 12 of Politics. Seth soon returned in class with the following comments; he referred to Jane’s ideas mainly, yet as he talked I began to understand my experience with my father and his after-death situation as I perceived it.

[...] “Maybe Seth will talk about our own things instead of giving dictation — your material on your father [which I received this past Sunday evening], or what you got on your mother this afternoon. [...]

[...] That episode had upset me to some degree, but Jane’s discussion of the subject in Politics, plus a few comments Seth made in ESP class last night, helped me put the affair in a more objective light.

[...] Jane and I had grown very used to living with Seth’s production of his book; we had come to look forward to each development. [...] I can feel — I know — that Seth’s going to end his book soon now, probably tonight, and I don’t want it to happen, I guess.” She’d mentioned such feelings occasionally before, since Seth began work on the last two chapters.)

[...] The following material is included because it supplements Seth’s data in Chapter Twenty-one. After Seth began that chapter Jane and I realized we could become quite interested in biblical history, but our time for learning had been brief. [...]

(“Good evening, Seth.”)

(“Excellent, Seth.”)

(2. There are clear connections between the “massive” portions of Jane’s latest psychic adventure and her first encounters with Seth Two in April, 1968; she goes into those experiences in some detail in Chapter Seventeen of The Seth Material. There is more on Seth Two in Chapter Twenty-two of Seth Speaks. In Chapter One of The Seth Material, she describes her first “trip” through an altered state of consciousness — and how it resulted in the production of her manuscript, The Physical Universe as Idea Construction. [...]

[...] I came across his essay, The Poet, in which he talked about the ‘speakers’ as being those who use their inner abilities to ‘speak the inner secrets of nature.’ The essay impressed me strongly, seeming to echo elements in my own writing and psychic characteristics; and of course I thought of Seth’s ‘Speakers’ as he described them in Chapter Twenty of Seth Speaks. [According to Seth, Emerson was a Speaker too!] Then Bob Monroe and his wife arrived, and we had a busy evening. Seth came through, and so forth.

(Seth came through Sunday night, April 1, in a long recorded discussion with the Monroes. [...]

[...] We think the cellular memory that Seth describes was also involved, as witness these excerpts from her account:

[...] Now Seth gave a few paragraphs for Jane, then said good night at 10:10 P.M. Even with the many pauses she’d used this evening—most of which I didn’t indicate—Jane’s delivery had often been quite intent and meaningful. In their own way the pauses served as additional punctuation and emphasis for some of Seth’s information.)

In fact, I believe that a good amount of Seth’s material this evening was inspired by my struggles with that note. Such interchanges among Jane, Seth, and me—and among books—often take place.

2. Seth should have said that light can be defined as being made up of waves or particles, but he didn’t put it quite that way, and I let stand what he did say. [...]

3. Seth’s “fields of consciousness” sounds like an elaboration of field theory in physics. [...]

Two and a half years ago I wrote in the closing notes for Session 869, in Chapter 10 of Mass Events, that she had finally received from Seth the full title for this book: Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment. [...] To answer one letter would draw its author to our doorstep at once: “I am your Seth,” and: “I will visit you as soon as I hear from you.” The writer of the other letter, while praising our work, is caught up in questions of conventional religion: “I keep wondering over and over again whether Seth is a demon or a deception. [...]

[...] After supper tonight she suggested that I get the session notebook ready, although when I joined her in the living room at 8:30 she said she didn’t feel Seth around at all.

[...] Often I remind myself that each note I write in connection with the Seth books, or send to a correspondent, represents my attempt as I compose it to grasp a little bit better the interior and exterior realities I am creating for myself. [...]

On the envelope of the letter containing the queries about Seth’s validity, Jane had penned a few lines as she sat at her desk yesterday afternoon:

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.

(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.

(4:50 p.m. Jane said Seth “could have gone on and on.” [...] She said she’d tried to reach the platform Seth had described in the last session, and as I’d suggested she try to do, but with limited success. [...]

(After her lunch I read to Jane the same two sessions I’d read her yesterday — for February 1 and 5. I told her that my question for Seth is, why did the fever business start after her initiation of Day 1 of her new program? [...]

[...] Seth has forecast this. [...]

[...] Her Seth voice was indeed on the quiet side.)

(Before the session I’d asked Jane if Seth could comment upon the reported drop in sales of Seth Speaks recently as reported by Tam Mossman at Prentice-Hall. [...]

There were other reasons, in that the paperback Seth Material is meant to be read first, and lead readers into Seth Speaks. [...]

[...] The books are well established, and there will be an acceleration even with the hardcover Seth Speaks as the paperback is assimilated. [...]

[...] The same applies to what you could do in marketing the Seth material from manuscript.

[...] I’d say that her own awareness of multiple channels has grown out of her initial sensing of the channels available from Seth, as described in the 616th session in Chapter 2 of Personal Reality; and that her material on neurological speeds is related to the observations of Jane that were noted by Sue Watkins in Seth Speaks; see the 594th session in the Appendix of that book. [...]

(9:10 P.M. Jane began her own dictation before tonight’s session by saying that as she’d typed her statements yesterday [for Appendix 4] she would “get glimpses” of some of the concepts Seth was going to talk about in “Unknown” Reality — yet they would immediately vanish from her consciousness, so that all she had left was the knowledge that she’d experienced the insight.

(By now Jane was dictating steadily, almost as she does when speaking for Seth.) “Now everything I just said came in a flash while I was waiting for you to write down what you just wrote; but what I got originally was like a ball of string, so that as I explained it the string unraveled into the words …

“I had all kinds of sudden flashes about this when I was doing the dishes (less than half an hour ago) — about Seth’s book, and that in a strange way it was difficult for me to get this book material. [...]

3. One of the most unique out-of-body experiences, or projections, I’ve had was much like that which Seth describes here. It took place in April 1971, and I wrote about it in Chapter 20 of Seth Speaks. See the notes for the 583rd session. My consciousness didn’t travel more than 10 feet from my body that time, but the little journey, so vivid and pleasant, did much to reinforce the enlarged view of reality that I’d gradually begun to adopt after Jane started delivering the Seth material late in 1963. [...]

[...] Just as they had before our three-month layoff from book work [after Session 707], her trances for “Unknown” Reality were proving to be more “difficult” to initiate than those for the previous Seth books.⁹ She often had to wait for just the right moment to get back into dictation following a break, too; so tonight, after we’d shared an apple, she sat rather impatiently anticipating Seth’s return. [...]

[...] Seth began describing the inner senses early in 1964. [...] Jane devoted Chapter 19 of The Seth Material to the inner senses.

A note: Just as he periodically reminds us of his material-to-come on physical aging and out-of-body states (see Note 4, above), Seth mentions that there are more inner senses he’ll tell us about someday — then adds that many of them are so far removed from reality as we understand it that our comprehension will be intellectual at best; in such cases we won’t be able to identify with them emotionally. And then other groups of inner senses, Seth continues, are truly “beyond verbalization.”

I might add here another insight into the relationship between Jane and Seth — the kind of information we continue to search for. [...] From Seth she then picked up material to the effect that “time was in the present to the cat … in a way its life was eternal to it, whether it lived 10 months or 10 years, or whatever.” At the time (she wrote later for me) emotionally she objected strenuously to that message of Seth’s, since “it seemed too easy a way to sign off a cat’s life — or any other life — even if it was true. [...]

We’re still trying to get answers, with the help of the Seth material. I don’t mind noting that I think that with Seth, Jane has achieved some understanding of our species’ larger questions about life and death. Seth went into those questions while talking about Billy in sessions 837–39, but his material is much too long to print in Mass Events — and even too long to touch upon the highlights in any adequate way. [...]

(Almost five weeks have passed since Seth gave the 835th session. [...] Let me try to put that unhappy event in perspective now, in the continuing chronology of our lives as they’re enmeshed in the Seth material in general and in Mass Events in particular.

[...] During the session Seth discussed Billy’s illness to some extent, while also giving the first “installment” of an answer to a longstanding question of mine: I was curious about the relationship between the host — whether human, animal, or plant — and a disease it might contract, one that was “caused,” say, by a virus. [...]

[...] I’d felt somewhat better after Seth’s information about those portions of my anatomy in the deleted part of the last session, the 846th, for the previous Wednesday. [...] She didn’t say a great deal, except that she’d try to get herself in a quiet mood in order to have the session, and hope Seth could help. [...]

(I’ll begin the private material with a paragraph that’s not strictly private, in order to set the scene—although actually Seth says little enough to me.

(“Thank you very much, Seth.” [...]

[...] We thought the session was over at this point, but Seth did return a minute later for a little more material related to the body of tonight’s session. [...]

[...] Seth’s monologues are broken up by humorous references or snatches of conversation with Rob. Seth’s own book, Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul, will be presented using the session format, however, so that the entire flavor of the sessions can be appreciated.

The nature of this book also meant that the Seth material was chosen exactly because it related to subjective experiences such as dreams and consciousness. Seth also relates beautifully to other individuals in sessions and in give-and-take conversations, as I’ve tried to show several instances. [...]

Seth’s own book will carry his discussions of the dream state still further. [...]

(Last night Peggy Gallagher told us that she is following the suggestions given by Seth in the unscheduled 238th session, but hasn’t noticed any improvement yet in the “bursitis” in her neck and left shoulder and arm. [...] Seth has linked her difficulty to improper yoga exercises, and tension between the third to fifth vertebrae.

[...] In that session Ezra is dealt with in the envelope data with the same type of data; Seth gave Jane the grave data, signifying Ezra’s death, but at that time Jane, who did not like the idea of graves, did not use the word. This time, Jane now said, she came out with it when Seth gave her the data. [...]

(Yet note that above she has an impression of a basement instead, personally, and when speaking for Seth does not use the word grave, as she did the first time. [...] Is Seth clairvoyantly aware of water in, or near, the grave? [...]

(“Good evening, Seth.”)

[...] When I told Seth the object did not, Jane said it bothered her but not Seth. [...] I was trying to see what answers along the way would do to help spur Seth on towards more data, when I noted that he was off the track.

(“Good evening, Seth.”)

(“No, Seth.”

(My next quick sketch as Jane continued speaking for Seth: Is this sign, +, a reference to the string wrapped around the Bernard package? [...]

(On a few occasions in the past we have had instances where Seth insisted a certain sight, or object, was there for the seeing, at a location visited by one of our friends taking part in an experiment; the friend however, with no memory of whatever Seth happened to be talking about, simply could not verify Seth.)

[...] I suggested she demand plenty of energy, as Seth said she could do in the last session. Also, Jane’s hip and foot had bothered her a good deal, and she told me that she had not been consistent yet in demanding the energy available to her, and in channeling it upon her books as suggested by Seth.

[...] Instead most of the session was devoted to Seth’s tuning in on Bill and Peggy Gallagher, who are on vacation this week in Nassau.

(“Good evening, Seth.”

[...] This was the second time Seth had given me the chance to ask a question after an experiment. I could not be sure, without checking with Seth in detail, but I thought Jane had been wandering about on the above data. [...] Earlier in the day I had wondered what would happen if I asked Seth/Jane to go over all of the data again; I supposed Jane would take this as a sign that the first data wasn’t much good, and at break Jane said this was her thought at the time.

(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. [...] Seth has advised patience here; John said this is difficult for him but that he is carefully considering the advice. [...]

(My question proved to have some value, for in some manner it spurred Seth, or Jane, to a better effort. Listed below are the connections we could make without asking Seth.

(John again agreed with Seth. He also verified Seth again, in that he remembers a younger girl living three houses away. [...]

(During her delivery Jane had also “picked up” that Seth would soon finish this third section, and that the first three sections would make up Part 1 of the book. So far, Seth hasn’t designated or titled a Part 1.⁶ Jane had received more, but she was vague on it: “… something to do with how each of us could be our own dream-art scientist, mental physicist, and complete physician. And there’s more to come on the three classifications of man that Seth gave in that earlier session … And stuff on the lands of the mind, I think, which leads to our ancient civilizations and how they’re embedded in our minds now …”

(In a whisper:) Good evening.
 (“Good evening, Seth.”)

[...] Jane had been in a deep trance for over an hour, yet she was out of it before I finished writing Seth’s last sentence. [...]

(That “earlier session” is the 687th, in Section 1, and in it Seth mentioned parallel man, probable man, and alternate man. [...]

[...] Again, as far as I am concerned, and I am Seth, the Seth material begins with the Seth material.

[...] I had meant to try this for some time, knowing part of it was contradictory, before asking Seth to straighten it out. Jane and I had been talking about trying to check out some of this material, since presumably records concerning Frank Watts would exist locally; and possibly people who knew him, other than Miss Callahan, and a co-worker of Jane’s at the gallery when the sessions began, Mrs. Borst, might be found who would help us verify any data Seth gave. [...]

[...] The Seth material begins with the Seth material. [...]

(Jane had suspected the above would be Seth’s answer, and had told me so over the weekend. This means that Seth first actually announced his presence, by name, on page 23 of the material and during the 4th session. [...]

[...] I told her to do as she pleased; I hadn’t asked her to have Seth say anything about me. [...] As I sat on the couch Billy, who is much improved now, curled himself up half in my lap, so that writing as Seth spoke was more than a little difficult. Yet when Jane went into trance her delivery as Seth was fast and steady:)

[...] It wasn’t Seth speaking, but her own delivery was quite precise and unhesitating, and she paused just as Seth did to give me time to write down her words. [...]

[...] “I know that’s from Seth,” Jane said. [...] Maybe next time we can ask Seth how come I got it that way.”

[...] By session time they were somewhat diminished, but were very inhibiting during the day, making me hesitate to do the things I’d ordinarily do without a second thought, such as drive to the post office to mail Jane’s intro for Sue’s book Conversations With Seth. [...]