“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Five scheduled session dates have passed since we held the 884th session three weeks ago; we missed four of those, but did hold a private, or deleted, session on October 10. We’ve been busy. Jane has been working hard on her God of Jane. He’s also written a number of poems. [Some of them are on reincarnation, and I plan to present them when Seth gets into that subject in Dreams.] On October 7, a Sunday, Jane saw for the first time the work Sue Watkins has done on Conversations With Seth, the book she’s writing about the ESP classes Jane used to hold. The project is turning out to be much longer than Sue had thought it would be, and she still has a few chapters to go. The two women spent the day going over the manuscript, and I had a chance to read some of it also. Later Sue laughingly admitted that she’d been nervous at first, imagining all kinds of adverse reactions either Jane or I might have—but she’s doing a fine job. She has complete freedom to do Conversations in her own way. The next day Jane began making notes for the introduction she’s to write for the book.

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

In effect, Ankh-Hermes has published not only a translation but a condensation. Considering the eagerness with which we’ve looked forward to having the Seth material published in other languages, and the long waiting periods involved, this situation is frustrating indeed. Many of my notes, some of which contain excerpts of Seth material, have been eliminated. So have large portions of a number of the sessions themselves. The Appendix in Seth Spreekt is only 11 pages long, chopped down from 67 pages.

3. I’ve also suggested to Jane that she might be able to incorporate into her story about Billy and Mitzi the little poem below. It’s from a number of sketches and untitled poems she did as a birthday book for me last June: