“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Seth actually began his Preface for this book, Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment, with the next, 881st session, which Jane delivered for him 12 days later [on September 25]. I chose to present this private session first because in it Seth offers certain information about Jane and me that I think applies to all of our work with him, through the session and books, and to our own separate creative lives as well. Especially do I like to interpret his material tonight as meaning that Jane is “a psychic or a mystic,” for to me, at least, this means that in this physical life she’s chosen to penetrate as deeply as she can the depths of reality, or consciousness.

Later in these notes I also plan to include, as a partial answer to many who have written us on the subject, material Seth gave on animal consciousness; this information came through just three days ago, in the 878th session for September 10. In the meantime I want to tie together Dreams and the last Seth-Jane book, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. Seth completed his work on Mass Events about a month ago [on August 15], and a week later I began finishing my notes for it. This will require at least several months. At the same time I’ll be taking Jane’s dictation for Dreams. Along with my painting and dream recording, both of which I do in the mornings, all of these activities come together in just the kind of busy, creative life I greatly enjoy. As for Jane, she couldn’t be more pleased to be so involved with all she’s doing.

I wrote quite a bit in Mass Events about our publishing activities, just to show for the record how complicated certain aspects of the creative life can be as we juggled sessions, manuscripts, proofreading, and deadlines [to list a few of our endeavors]; we “worked” at any time of the day or night—which didn’t bother us at all. Since a lot of that kind of information was presented in Mass Events, Jane and I don’t intend for much of it in Dreams. Rather, after indicating in this Preface the continuity between the two books, I’ll discuss briefly a few other subjects we feel deeply about. All of them are related to our work with the Seth material and Mass Events, however, and will, I’m sure, be reflected in Dreams. Beyond that, I have little idea of how many notes of Jane’s and mine, or quotations from nonbook sessions, for example, we’ll be adding to this book.

Our lives do indeed seem to revolve around book projects and events! First, let me update the creative activities Jane was involved in while Seth and she were finishing Mass Events.

As of last May, when she laid it aside to begin work on her own The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto, Jane had some 17 chapters in fairly good shape for her third Seven novel, Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time. By now she’s written 15 chapters, rough first draft, for God of Jane, and done notes for a number of others, out of a total of perhaps 25; she knows she’ll return to Seven when she’s through with the much more personal God of Jane. Since she’s finished her Seth part of the work for Mass Events, three days ago she began writing the Introduction to that book. She’s been painting, answering mail, and writing poetry. Jane would especially like to do another book of poetry, since she published Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time way back in 1975. She talks about doing this rather often, then reads through the collections of poems she’s built up over the years. She’s even made a few notes about such a venture. [Personally, I just wish I had more time to sit quietly and reread some of her poetry.]

Right now our friend Sue Watkins, who lives better than an hour’s drive upstate, is well past the 15th chapter of Conversations With Seth, the book she’s writing about the ESP classes Jane held from September 1967 to February 1975. Prentice-Hall will publish it. Jane hasn’t seen Conversations yet. Next month she’ll get together with Sue to go over it, then start writing the Introduction for the book soon afterward.

Emir is Jane’s children’s book—or the one for “readers of all ages,” as she puts it. At the same time, Tam Mossman, Jane’s editor at Prentice-Hall, is trying to find out whether the Dutch edition of Seth Speaks has been published. He thinks it has. As soon as Prentice-Hall receives its shipment of books from the Netherlands, Tam will forward the copies due us. The German-language edition of Seth Speaks was published in Switzerland four months ago [in May], and just three weeks ago we received our first fan letter from that country. The author wrote in English, and her appreciation of the work Jane and I are trying to do is amazingly similar to certain letters we receive from readers here at home. Even if that initial response was slow in coming [partly because of the language barrier, we think], we were glad to get it, for it indicated a commonality of interest in human potential, regardless of nationality. We expect the same kind of response from those who will seek out the Dutch Seth Speaks. We know the mail from European readers will very gradually increase, just as it did after Jane published The Seth Material in the United States in 1970.)

Even though she values the idea of independence as much as I do, the idea of such a life doesn’t appeal to Jane at all. Not that she didn’t take to camping, for instance, when I introduced her to it after we married in 1954. She grew up in a quite different physical and psychological environment, however, and the outdoor, athletic life was not a part of that ambience. But she more than proved her own intuitive grasp of nature, and of my own desires, by producing for me as a Christmas present [© 1977] her excellent book, The World View of Paul Cézanne: A Psychic Interpretation….

(Jane had been so relaxed, so physically at ease yesterday—as she has been often lately—that we’d passed up our regularly scheduled Wednesday night session. At the same time she’s been extremely inspired and creative recently, working on her own God of Jane and the Introduction for Seth’s Mass Events, turning out many pages of excellent material for those works. Even though she was again very relaxed today, she was also active writing. In fact, after supper she produced two more pages of notes that she “picked up” from Seth on his new book Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment.

We held the session in the living room, as usual. Jane yawned, then laughed as we waited for Seth to come through. “I keep trying to change that title, though….” After a prolonged juggling of titles and themes on her own, she’d finally acquired the book’s title directly from Seth some seven weeks ago, or shortly before July 30, 1979; see the closing note for Session 869 in Chapter 10 of Mass Events. “I just think that ‘value fulfillment’ is a strange phrase to use in a book title,” Jane said. “It’s too unfamiliar—I’m afraid it’ll confuse the reader. I keep thinking of something simpler, like Dreams and Evolution: A Seth Book. And without ‘Evolution’ being in quotes, too. Or how about Dreams, Evolution, and Creativity …?”

To some extent you had your own niches, recognizable by society even if they were relatively (underlined) unusual. You did not know that there was a deeper, older, or richer tradition—a more ancient heritage—to which you belonged, because you found no hint of it in your society. It seemed at different times since our sessions began that there were disruptive conflicts. For example: Was Ruburt a writer or was he a psychic? Were you an artist, or weren’t you? What about the writing you did—both for our books, and the writing that you sometimes plan to do on your own?

(8:53.) Early artists hoped to understand the very nature of creativity itself as they tried to mimic earth’s forms. Poetry and painting were both functional in ways that I will describe in our next book (humorously, elaborately casual), and “esthetic,” but poetry and painting have always involved primarily man’s attempt to understand himself and his world. The original functions of art—meaning poetry and painting here specifically—have been largely forgotten. The true artist in those terms was always primarily—in your terms again—a psychic or a mystic.

(9:09.) He did indeed pick up from me a partial list of the subject matters to be covered in our new book—which will be called Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment.

(Pause.) The book will necessarily of course include much material on the true nature of creativity and its uses and misuses by civilizations. You do not have to fight to trust the thrust of your own life. That thrust is always meant to lead you toward your own best fulfillment, in a way that will benefit the species as well.