“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.

The essays contain many insights into the meanings the whole experience with illness has had for us, and will continue to have for many years. Our lives have been irrevocably changed—by choice—and not for the worse, either. Jane and I used our wills to intensify our focuses in certain areas. And I’m sure that as the reader works his or her way through the essays, it will become quite apparent that I wrote them just as much for Jane and me as I did for others—all in our ceaseless attempts to better understand, to grasp a bit more firmly, those mental and physical adventures that we’re trying to delve into “this time around.”

[...] Perhaps we’re too stubborn about agreeing wholeheartedly that such possibilities exist, or perhaps we’re just too enamored of our “present” physical lives, even with all of our challenges, to want to fully concur with Seth.

[...] I’ve written before that as physical creatures we’re always going to find the contradictory notion of “simultaneous time” hard to comprehend, intellectually at least.

[...] All well and good to announce that one was a serf some 900 years ago—but one is much more likely to be either tuning into minute signals surrounding the actual physical and mental reality of the serf (poor fellow), or to be picking up on elements of that individual’s personality as they’re associated with the serf’s whole self or entity. [...]

[...] As a very perceptive young lady wrote Jane and me recently, why can’t people be progressed to their future lives just as successfully as they’re regressed to their past lives? [...]

“Actually,” she continued much more emphatically now, as we discussed her rather mild comments about the other Seths, “I’m deeply outraged that some people who considered themselves ‘followers’ of mine or Seth can so easily fool themselves when they claim to be speaking for Seth—be so blind to their own motives, or not recognize the fact that they’re taking advantage of people. They’re also using my work to validate their own….”)

[...] I know that to some we’re sure to have appeared slow in putting to use much of the material, but in a most basic respect we’re way ahead in the situation: If we hadn’t almost instantaneously begun to encourage the flow of information from Seth when Jane started to express it some 18 years ago, and to write it down, then it wouldn’t even exist—at least in its present form. [...]

[...] We’re telling ourselves that that little challenge will automatically work itself out at the right time. [...]

[...] We’re angry and dismayed. [...]

[...] We were pleased to get it for, as I told Jane, if ever we’re to understand all of the events in our lives that led to the hospital experience, we must call upon every ability at our service. [...]

[...] Rob also wants this material presented as a unit so that it can serve as a foundation for future books we’re already discussing, and I agree with his decision.

I could write many windy pages about the mysteries of life, I suppose, and how each of us does the best we can, although often we may not understand what we’re doing; but what I really want to do is simply note that in her case, fortunately, and even if she may think she’s failed in certain major areas of life, Jane has achieved some remarkable insights into her own situation (as I have into mine, being her marriage partner). [...]

Even if she’s to remain in something like her present impaired state, Jane said as I wrote the above paragraph, still it seems we’re better off for having the Seth material than not: “I’d sure as hell rather take my chances with it than without!” she exclaimed, if somewhat ruefully.

[...] Some may contend that they’re not even theories, but only hypotheses—tentatively inferred explanations requiring much further experimentation and examination. [...]

[...] That’s a pretty limited existence you’re talking about there….” [...]