“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I worked on the essays in succession, just as they’re given here, although I found myself adding to the earlier ones as I moved into the later ones. In terms of length alone, it soon became obviously impossible to write all of the material for any piece on the date given. Even by going back over them, however, I couldn’t discuss everything I wanted to: The essays could have easily grown into a book of their own. This weaving things together to make them “fit” is only natural for one of my temperament, but I didn’t alter any of my original copy—that I’d have refused to do—and I kept intact those first spontaneous descriptions of the events attendant to Jane’s physical difficulties, as well as our deep-seated, sometimes wrenching feelings connected to them. I did not look at Seth-Jane’s Dreams itself while writing the essays, in order to avoid having them overly influenced by work in the book. Instead, we want all of this preliminary material to show how we live daily—regardless of how well we may or may not do—with a generalized knowledge of, and belief in, the Seth material.

Jane appreciates that the dates I’m always giving merely furnish a convenient framework for our material, but she’s hardly enamored of such precise methodology; she understands that it’s my way of doing things, realizes it’s very useful, and goes on from there. I use a similar system in presenting all of the published Seth material. It has the great attribute of allowing for quick reference timewise (if not always by subject matter) to any of the more than 1,500 regular, private or deleted, and “ESP class” sessions Jane has given over the past 19 years—until July 1982, that is, when I began work on these passages.

That basic impetus toward survival came to take precedence over everything else. Indeed, for several weeks following the initiation of the challenges I relate in the essays, supposedly creative activities like writing books and painting pictures often faded into insignificance by comparison. And for me, Jane’s condition came to stand for everything we don’t know in our particular joint, chosen, probable earthly reality.

Being a proper candidate meant that I would turn my life over to medical science in the hospital for at least a year: a year spent in therapy, surgical procedures, and more therapy, until I ended up having at least four separate operations. [...]

[...] They were in their collective way like magicians, producing wonders out of the clear air, stunning you with their charming smiles and manners, trying to win you over to some strange cause.

[...] “But in spite of everything, over all those years I never felt sick until I went into the hospital,” she wailed. [...]

[...] I answered my own question by remembering accounts I had on file, explaining how people of various ages had withstood numerous, incredible operations, sometimes over a period of years. [...]

[...] A very simplified explanation is that in a process repeated over and over, a variety of defender cells called phagocytic monocytes turn into macrophages, or scavenger cells that, in turn, release enzymes which consume healthy joint tissue. [...]

[...] Over and over Marie told Jane that she was no good, that the daughter’s birth had caused the mother’s illness. [...]

[...] Mother and child were supported by welfare, and assisted over the years by a series of itinerant housekeepers—a number of these were prostitutes who, according to Jane, were periodically thrown out of “work” when town officials would shut down the “houses,” try to clean up gambling, and so forth. [...]

[...] Then as we went to bed she brought up two additional subjects to discuss, for those who would wonder: why we hadn’t more actively sought medical help in the past for her physical condition; and the many private, or deleted, sessions Seth himself has given for her over the years.

After all, if he does come through others—or can if he wants to—why hasn’t Seth himself simply said so, and repeatedly, in the books as we’ve published them over the years? [...]

Obviously, Jane’s deliberations over whether to continue physical life are much easier to appreciate when she’s depressed and/or physically uncomfortable, and during those times I can sense the fluctuations in her examination of her psyche. Portions of her are still quite deliberately thinking it all over, I’m sure, although she doesn’t mention this outside the session frameworks she provides for Seth and herself.

Just over nine weeks have passed now since I brought my wife home from the hospital. [...]

[...] Nor have I resumed the midnight walks I used to take over the hilly streets of our neighborhood; I used to look forward to seeing the shadowy deer as they moved down into the streets from the woods north of the hill house. [...]

[...] And I still implicitly believe the quotation Seth gave on April 16, 1981, over a year ago now: “In that larger picture there are no errors, for each action, pleasant or not, will in its fashion be redeemed, both in relation to itself and … to a larger picture that the conscious mind may not be able presently to perceive.”

[...] Eroticism—and yes, outright sexual curiosity and arousal over reversed genitalia, for instance—must enter in sometimes, although in print at least these specifics of sex in connection with reincarnation seem to be a taboo subject. [...]

[...] Consciously, however, Jane has never been overly enthusiastic about the idea of reincarnation to begin with. [...]

As Seth told us in that introductory session, over four and a half years ago, Jane’s “body itself has nothing wrong with it except the application of beliefs…. [...]

[...] At first she tried to do it as best she could through writing: Painfully, holding her pen awkwardly, she spent over an hour recording the first four paragraphs—even then, after checking our records, I added to her work material about dates and sequences.)

All of that work—and more—accounts for the long delay in the completion of Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment. Actually, with the exception of one session held in November 1980, I let my work on the book go for over 13 months, from early June 1980 to mid-July 1981.

[...] Do, when you can, look over my “magical approach” material. [...]

[...] Instead, we despaired over her physical condition as the weeks passed. [...]

[...] (Dr. Mandali told us that the hormone dosage has to be increased very slowly, over a period of months, in order to avoid strain upon the heart and the endocrine system.)

[...] 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. [...]