“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Jane tried to write with her impaired right hand, frustrated again and again because she couldn’t hold a pen well enough to put down the ideas stirring in her mind. At times she used her recorder in an effort to compensate for her lack of writing ability, but this left us with the prospect of finding the time to transcribe the tapes—and so far we haven’t done so. (Much of that material is so personal that at this time we don’t want others involved with it, by the way.)

So, one thing I know: I’m a far different person now as I write this Introduction than I was when Seth dictated the book. And as he spoke of the beginnings of the world, I began to play with the idea of quietly ending my own private sphere of existence. Not through a violent suicide, but through a half-calculated general retreat.

If earlier, however, Ruburt had the erroneous idea that he was going too fast—or would or could—and had to restrain himself and exert caution, now he received the medical prognosis, the “physical proof” that such was not the case, and in fact that the opposite was true: He was too slow. If our words could not convince him, or his own understanding grasp the truth, then you had the “truth” uttered with all of the medical profession’s authority. And if once a doctor had told him years ago how excellent was his hearing, the medical profession now told him that his slowness (his thyroid deficiency) had helped impair his hearing to an alarming degree.

(8:10 P.M. Jane’s Seth voice had grown a little stronger as she progressed with the session. We were very encouraged by two key points Seth had mentioned: that her thyroid gland had repaired itself before—such an event happening now would free her of dependence upon medication—and that her sinful self’s superhuman image had “cracked and crumbled in the hospital experience.” Those two developments could leave her body free to heal itself. [In the first essay I wrote that according to her doctor Jane’s thyroid gland has ceased functioning, and that she has to take a substitute hormone daily for the rest of her life. But the doctor hadn’t expressed any idea at all that a thyroid gland could regenerate itself.]

It’s impossible to present here all of Jane’s own material on her sinful self—much as I’d like to—but shortly I do want to give portions of the first few pages to show readers how experiences from one’s very early years can sometimes have the most profound effects in later life. As will be seen, that material obviously raises as many questions as it answers, but right now we can do little more than touch upon the whole affair. We have years of work ahead of us as we search for understanding. Certainly Jane chose all of her challenges in this life, just as I did, and as we believe each person does, but a major concomitant of focusing upon certain activities involves how one copes with them (often in close cooperation with others) as the years pass: What new and original depths of feeling and idea are uncovered, layer by layer, what insights, what rebellions, and, yes, what acceptances….

And so on. It all was—and is—great material, and more accurate and penetrating than my own ideas as to why some portion of Jane’s psyche might feel a need for protection from the world, or from another part of herself. While profoundly upsetting both of us, the revelations of her sinful self also seemed to provide a magical psychological key: the yearned-for understanding that would finally unlock Jane’s bent physical body. But it didn’t. Nothing did—not Seth, with all of his great material on the magical approach, not the publication of the new books, not even Jane’s own work. The challenge of our learning enough to initiate her recovery was still with us during that summer of 1981.