“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Seth, then, has finished his work on Dreams. I wrote the original version of the notes for each book session as he delivered it through Jane, and also began collecting other notes and reference material that might be used. Since I’ve completed the essays, all I have to do now is “refine” the session notes (and addenda) as I type the finished manuscript. Jane will help as much as she can. We expect to have the book ready for our editors, Tam Mossman and Lynne Lumsden, by the end of the year.

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.

Seth gave so many sessions that were devoted to my own physical condition that I finally became embarrassed and confused: The sessions were obviously terrific—why couldn’t I put them to more practical use?

I have no idea, of course, what physical state I’d be in if the Seth phenomenon hadn’t appeared in my life (in late 1963), or if I hadn’t had those sessions to rely upon. And even in the most private-type sessions Seth always wound his material into more public areas, so that we have reams of unpublished (and very controversial) material dealing with the connections between one’s illness and other members of the family, community relationships, and with the very belief systems that underlie all of human activity. [...]

[...] 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.

[...] The diagnosis—which I mentioned in my first session (on April 1)—gave a pinpointed, specific cause: a severely underactive thyroid gland, a situation that in no way contradicts Seth’s own larger interpretation of my physical state.

The quotation from Seth just presented will certainly lead the reader to wonder about additional sessions we may have acquired from him since April 16, and from Jane since April 20 (see the essays for those dates). The answer is that we’ve held 13 more sessions—4 of them given by Jane “herself,” and 9 by Seth speaking through her. The last session in that baker’s dozen was delivered by Seth on June 7. Most of the sessions are rather short, and not all of them are strictly personal. [...]

Even if those sessions can’t be quoted in these essays because of the obvious space limitations, I can note that Jane and Seth each continued to develop the themes already laid down in the sessions that have been presented. [...] The material in the sessions is exhilarating, painful, enlightening, perceptive, frustrating, and maddening by turn—and sometimes, it seems, all of those things at once. [...]

But that simple statement also means that our dream work relative to Jane’s challenges has often been powerfully abetted by Seth in many of the 347 completely private and 159 partially private sessions he’s given us since November 1965. [...] (Not that I haven’t presented excerpts from a few of those sessions in other Seth books.)

[...] In his session for April 16 (see the essay for the same date), Seth told us that on several occasions Jane’s thyroid gland has “repaired itself,” but we don’t think that has fully happened yet this time. In a recent private session (for May 10) Seth told us: “The gland is activating itself by itself—off and on, so to speak, giving a sputtering effect. [...]

[...] Jane held a few widely scattered sessions for Dreams, and a number of private ones as fall came, then winter. Those sessions represented largely futile activity, I thought, yet I gladly admitted that each one of them was as unique and creative as ever, no matter what its subject. [...] Finally, early in December 1981 I told Jane I was on the verge of refusing to sit with her for any sessions at all, regular or private, for I’d become deeply afraid that the more sessions she held the worse she’d get. [...]

[...] Not only that, but those “magical” sessions had naturally developed into another series, this time on a portion of the personality Seth called “the sinful self”—mine as well as that of others—and those sessions had in turn led me to produce many pages of material directly from my own sinful self. [...] And even if all of those sessions had been born out of my own psychic and psychological challenges and dilemmas, I knew they were excellent and deserved publication.

[...] The way had been illuminated by Seth himself in his private sessions, with his discussions of her sinful self and related challenges: Those sessions, the publication of the two books, Jane’s personal sinful-self material and her worsening physical situation, all combined to serve as a complex trigger. [...] I presented their beginning in the notes for Session 931, in Chapter 9 of Dreams. I repeat that material here but add considerably more to it. [...]

(We finally held our first “new” Seth session last Monday evening, on April 12. [...] And even though this is a personal session, still I think it contains clues that apply to all of us. [...]

(8:47 A.M. Our original idea was to insert the session Jane gave this morning in one of the earlier essays. [...] After Jane came through with her dictation I told myself I’d know what to do with it, and awoke the next morning with the clear understanding that her session should be presented just as is, and when we received it. [...] Presenting the session in a more isolated manner here, then, may give the reader a clearer idea of how we felt during Jane’s early days in the hospital [and later too, for that matter]. This course also lets the session serve as an automatic bridge to some of the material in the earlier essays.

So last night, less than two days after she’d held her last session, I asked Jane for some material about the central theme of her days in the hospital, both from her own viewpoint and that of the doctors who probed, examined, and discussed her and her problems. [...]

[...] The exception was the youngish doctor Jane had referred to at the very end of her last session. [...]

[...] Without making any conscious decision, I might simply cease having sessions. (Long pause.) I did continue with the sessions, of course. [...]

[...] 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.” [...]

Early in this essay (which I began on May 7, 1982), I mentioned the series of sessions Seth gave in 1980 on his magical approach to reality, and the different approaches Jane and I took toward doing books on the subject. We were becoming so harried by her worsening physical symptoms when that material started to come through that she gave up working on Dreams and concentrated on those private sessions instead. [...] By then, she’d held only one session for Dreams in the last 13 months.

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…. [...] Then, a bit later, Seth made a statement that I’ve thought most ironic ever since: “In terms of creativity, however, Ruburt has long been operating in Framework 2, and this session should help him make certain correlations so that he can automatically begin to use such methods in regard to his physical conditon.”

Among the subjects not discussed so far are Seth’s (and our own) ideas on reincarnation, counterparts, probable realities, and Frameworks 1 and 2. Jane briefly referred to Seth’s “magical approach” material in her dictation last month (see her own session of April 16, 1982, in Essay No. [...]

[...] My version will mainly feature the dozen or so sessions Seth gave in August—September 1980, and the poetry Jane was inspired to write because of them. [...]

(7:15 P.M. Our next “Jane session” took place four days later, on the date shown above. [...]

We’ve had no Seth sessions yet, either regular or private. [...]

In the meantime, two days after I discovered the tape, I asked Jane, “Do you want to have a session tonight?”

[...] 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. [...]

After some hesitation following my question about having a session this evening, Jane decided she wanted to contribute introductory material for Dreams. This was to be a new experience for us: Because of the arthritis she was having trouble even holding a pen, so she intended to dictate her material as though she were writing it herself in longhand. [...]

[...] I’d turned off the sound before the session began. [...]

[...] And Jane’s resolve, her will that, according to Seth, “is amazingly strong” (in Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality, see the 713th session for October 21, 1974), may buttress the understanding and determination of one or more of her counterparts in this life; she may meet (or have met) such an individual; another may live across an ocean, say, with no meeting ever to take place in physical terms.