“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Indeed, I didn’t learn that Jane had made the tape until five weeks later, after she’d returned to our hill house from the hospital: I found it on March 30, amid others in her writing room. She hadn’t labeled it, and I began to play it out of curiosity. The song’s mournful tones swam heavily in the room. It reminded me at once of a dirge or an elegy, and I felt chills as I began to intuitively understand just how meaningful it was, even without any translation at all.

As the days passed Jane kept putting me off about doing the translation, until finally I grew resentful and despairing at her refusal to cooperate. I decided to write around that one great line as best I could. For by then I knew that she had no intention of producing an English version: Some childlike and naive, yet deeply stubborn portion of her psyche, some “perverse area,” as Seth, her trance personality, jokingly characterized it long ago, had simply taken over and decided not to do any more on that subject. For its own reasons it didn’t want to, and that was it. I’d seen Jane operate in that fashion before, and I knew she’d have her way.

At first she didn’t know. The question followed the little talk we’d had after supper. My back hurt somewhat. I’d finally decided that the ache wasn’t because I’d been lifting her physically—all 82 pounds of her—but because of the medical bills we’d received today. (That had been my somewhat amused speculation to begin with.) We’ve gotten a flurry—a small blizzard—of bills from doctors during the last few days.

Because of her much-reduced thyroid activity, Jane often dozes or even sleeps in her chair. She’d very gradually started doing this before entering the hospital, but any physical causes behind her behavior had been unsuspected by us then. I only saw that she could use the rest, since she obviously didn’t feel well generally—but I also thought she was waiting for one of her characteristic surges of creative energy before digging into her next book (of which she always has several going). Our agreement was that in the meantime she was to start checking the sessions and my notes for Dreams; then I was to type the final manuscript. Jane never reached her goal, however. Instead she napped or drifted—even as she does now—while intermittently reading and rereading our material for Dreams without ever doing anything with it.

(7:10 P.M. Thursday, April 1, 1982. Once she began dictation, Jane’s pace was good. In fact, I had to write very rapidly, for I didn’t want to ask her to slow down during this initial experiment.)

I liked practically all of the doctors and nurses and orderlies, and they liked me. Most of them didn’t know or care “who I was.” Very few were familiar with my work (although a few local fans—strangers—eventually found their way to my hospital room). I found I could hold my own in that environment that at first had seemed so alien. I learned to joke even as my backside swung perilously above the commode, while I hoped that its aim was true in the hands of the nurses and orderlies—and again I felt that long-forgotten camaraderie with people, and a growth within myself apart from my work, or what I did. I had a right to be on earth because I’d been born here like every other physical creature, and on that level alone I was part of a great framework of physical energy and cooperation.

(8:31 P.M. “Well, that’s all for now,” Jane said after a long pause. “I sure am surprised I did that much. I didn’t know I could do it—especially that way…. I’d never have tried it if you hadn’t suggested it.”

Jane and I didn’t know whether the doctors we did business with even knew what a trance state was. I envisioned some hilarious episodes during which Seth, speaking through Jane, would try to explain to gatherings of medical people just who he was and what he believed. Next, he’d go into what Jane and I believed, and why. Then he’d add some very pungent remarks as to what those in his audiences believed, and why….