“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(7:30 P.M. After supper I told Jane I was going to work on the essays for Dreams. Already this morning I’d typed from my notes last night’s very encouraging private Seth session: “—and know that you have taken, both of you, important new strides.” Jane said she’d like to do some more dictation of her own, so I agreed to take down that instead. Once again, however, she shied away from translating any more of that dirgelike Sumari song she’d sung to herself, and recorded, shortly before going into the hospital. I still had only that one great line she’s interpreted for me in English: “Let my soul find shelter elsewhere.”

I now read to her the last two pages of material Seth had given us last night. Jane was nodding in her chair as I finished, and I thought she wouldn’t be doing any work this evening after all. Yet she roused herself: “I’ve got the first sentence, I guess.” I lit her cigarette for her. Her voice was free of tremor and her rate of delivery was a little slow.)

There is no doubt that I was caught between life’s contrasts, and only too aware of the endless questions that came to mind. On the one hand there was the Seth material itself, and Seth’s performance in his books.

(Long pause at 7:34.) His ideas had somehow led me to the point where the very dimensions of experience should change. As he presented them, his concepts dealt with the spontaneous, rambunctious powers with which nature was endowed. Seth insisted that those powers, followed at least in principle, would raise man’s estate and fill it with a brilliance and joy in which the old problems of the species would largely disappear.

Certainly our lives and the lives of others have been strongly influenced by the Seth material, changed for the better. Certainly our comprehensions have deepened as a result—yet in the face of that great promise, what was I doing barely able to leave my chair? And if spontaneous order was such a vital ingredient in the workings of the universe, then what was I doing trying to shut it down in my own daily life?

(Long pause at 7:40.) In the meantime, Rob and I often thought that this very book would never be completed. I might decide that I’d given enough years and energy to the Seth pursuit. Without making any conscious decision, I might simply cease having sessions. (Long pause.) I did continue with the sessions, of course. The book is finished. I realize more and more that life’s experience is played out in a framework that stretches between life’s contrasts. We live in a world slung between our dearest hopes and greatest fears, while seldom encountering either in their pure form.

Value fulfillment is the largest issue here, both with Seth’s book and my own experience, and if I really understood what Seth was saying in this book, I would not have needed to undergo such an uncomfortable drama in my daily life.