“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Four days after Sue’s visit we received an enthusiastic letter from an independent motion-picture producer and director in Hollywood, informing us that he’s finally succeeding in his quest for an option to the film rights to Jane’s novel, The Education of Oversoul Seven. This event marks the latest step in a rather complicated affair that began 18 months ago. It means only that our friends in Hollywood and in the subsidiary rights department at Prentice-Hall have agreed upon the terms of the option; a contract has yet to be signed by all of us. We’ve never asked Seth to comment upon either this project itself or anyone involved with it—nor has he volunteered such information, even in private sessions.

During this session hiatus I’ve been spending much time upon a series of letters to the publishers of Seth Speaks in Switzerland and in the Netherlands, as well as to those in charge at Prentice-Hall.¹ Last Saturday night we had a very interesting meeting with a psychologist from New York City. Our visitor taped Seth’s copious material, and is to send us a transcript of it.

Then tonight she began writing “a fun thing” about our cats, Billy and Mitzi, who are brother and sister just 10 months old now: “In the beginning, Billy and Mitzi weren’t even kittens yet, but only bits of sky and cloud that wanted to be pussycats. Not that anyone knew what cats were, because God hadn’t created any yet. If it hadn’t been for Billy and Mitzi, cats might not exist at all….” The story sprang out of the hilarious way she’s taken to addressing Mitzi in regard to that cat’s gifts from heaven; I’ve been telling her that the affair would make a great children’s book.³ In the several pages she wrote this evening Jane presented her material quite humorously, in a manner reminiscent of, yet different from, her second Seven novel, The Further Education of Oversoul Seven, and her Emir.⁴

Many of the ideas in our current book will be accepted by scientists most dubiously, though some, of course, will grasp what I will be saying. It is of course very difficult for you, because (pause) the deepest truths cannot be physically proven. (Pause.) Science is used to asking quite specific questions, and as Ruburt wrote recently (in God of Jane) it usually comes up with very specific answers—even if those answers are wrong (with some humor).

There is a part of man that Knows, with a capital K. That is the portion of him, of course, that is born and grows to maturity even while the lungs or digestive processes do not read learned treatises on the body’s “machinery,” ⁶ so in our book we will hope to arouse within the reader, of whatever persuasion, a kind of subjective evidence, a resonance between ideas and being. Many people write, saying that they feel as if somehow they have always been acquainted with our material—and of course they have, for it represents the inner knowing within each individual. (Pause.) In a fashion, creative play is your human version of far greater characteristics from which your universe itself was formed. There are all kinds of definite, even specific, subjective evidence for the nature of your own reality—evidence that is readily apparent once you really begin to look for it, particularly by comparing the world of your dreams with your daily life.

You may do what you wish yourselves (about taking the tests), of course, but our main purpose is to drive beyond psychology’s boundaries, and not play pussyfoot among the current psychological lilies of the field.

Our visiting psychologist left us a couple sets of the tests Seth referred to. Jane had resisted filling them out during our meeting with him, and has little intention of doing so now. Even our guest said the tests were very experimental; I believe that actually a colleague of his had devised them in large part. I thought they’d been [perhaps unwittingly] oriented in certain negative directions—that is, the one taking the test has to choose from a series of more or less negative possibilities, listing specific choices in an order that depends upon his or her personal belief systems—I think.

Obviously, Seth didn’t follow through on the statement he’d made near the end of the last book session, which we held much earlier this month: “Remind me, for our next session, to wind in a discussion of those subjective entities as they learned how to translate themselves into physical individuals.” However, I didn’t ask him for the material tonight, either. Jane hasn’t mentioned it. Such omissions can easily result when the session routine is interrupted—we simply may not keep a particular session that closely in mind as we become involved in other matters during a break. The information in question will be most interesting when Seth does come through with it.)

1. Some of my letters were triggered on October 9 (this month), when Jane and I received our first copies of Seth Spreekt, the Dutch-language edition of Seth Speaks. We saw at once that the people at Ankh-Hermes, the publishing company in the Netherlands, had cut the book considerably. As I wrote in the notes for the private session we held the next evening: “Our first reactions were ones of such stunned surprise that we didn’t even get mad.”

Our editor, Tam Mossman, has verified for us that the contract between Prentice-Hall and Ankh-Hermes contains a clause prohibiting cutting, unless Jane’s and my permission is given. Already those at Ankh-Hermes have been asked to withdraw from sale their shortened version of Seth Spreekt, and to publish a full-length one instead—a very expensive proposition indeed. Jane and I regret this, now that our first anger has passed. We’re caught between the economic realities of the situation as far as Ankh-Hermes is concerned, and our own intense desires that translations of the Seth books match the original versions as closely as possible. We fully agree with Seth that changes and distortions are inevitable as the Seth material is moved from English into other languages; we just want those alterations kept to a minimum. It appears that language difficulties involving publishers and agents led to the whole mix-up to begin with. Tam has begun work on a contractual amendment designed to prevent more such confusions. And all concerned must wait at least another year before a full-length version of Seth Speaks will be published in the Dutch language.

When all of summer’s
splendid leafery is gone
then space seems to surround
us everywhere, far and close.
The immense vault of the universe
turns intimate,
reaches to our chimneytops
in shining swirls of sudden openness
just outside of our back doors.
Space from the galaxies
rushes in to fill the new emptiness
where a million million leaves were,
and the valleys hold
natural cupfuls of space,
filled to their transparent brims.

5. By now, a number of the world’s leading scientists in the physical disciplines have publicly stated their beliefs that basically consciousness plays the primary role in our world and/or universe. For reasons too complicated to go into here, this attitude prevails even with some mathematicians who seek to penetrate to the core of our reality as they understand it.

Jane and I have often been most intrigued by the obvious contradictions involved here, for what can the materialistic scientists use other than mind—or consciousness, that poor epiphenomenon—to study and dissect matter? (Not to mention that innumerable experiments have proven that “physical matter” isn’t solid or objective at all, but “only” energy!) We have, then, the paradox of mind denying its own reality, let alone its importance. As far as we know, human beings are the only creatures on earth who would seriously engage in such learned, futile behavior. It’s also very ironic, I think, that the materialists spend years acquiring their specialized educations, and prestige, both of which they then use to inform us of the ultimate futility of all of our endeavors (including their own, of course). But for the materialists, the mind-brain duality isn’t scientific in the orthodox sense. It isn’t falsifiable; that is, it cannot be stated under what precise conditions the mind-brain duality could be proven false. To which, understandably enough, those scientists who do accept the reality of mind reply that neither can the idea be falsified that only what is “physical” is real.

Aside from anything Seth has said or ever may say about other probable realities, or even about human origins here on earth, I think it most risky at this stage in history for anyone—scientist or not—to dogmatically state that life has no meaning, or is a farce, or that attributes of our reality of which we can only mentally conceive at this time do not really exist. Discoveries in the “future” are quite apt to prove such limited viewpoints wrong. The history of science itself contains many examples of theories and “facts” gone awry. Moreover, why would our species want to depend upon as fragile a conception as epiphenomenalism through which to comprehend our reality? Or better yet, why does it in large part? Truly, our individual and collective ignorance of just our own probable reality is most profound at this time in our linear history (in those terms). Jane and I wouldn’t be surprised if ultimately, as a result of mankind’s restless search for meaning, we didn’t end up returning in a new official way to our ancient concepts of spirit within everything, animate and inanimate. Such an updated animistic/vitalistic view would take into account discoveries ranging from subnuclear events to the largest imaginable astronomical processes in our observable universe. Human beings do know their own worth, as Seth stated in this session.

“Science would say that the idea of meaning itself is simply a reflection of the state of the brain, as is the illusion of our consciousness. But a science that disregards consciousness must necessarily end up creating its own illusion. It ignores the reality of experience, the evidence of being, and in so doing it denies rather than reinforces life’s values.”