“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.

Today, Jane wrote three more excellent little poems, all of which I hope to eventually see published.² I think she grumbled the whole time she was doing them, though, since she kept at herself because she wasn’t working on God of Jane.

A few notes. When Ruburt forgot to worry because “he wasn’t working,” his natural playful creativity bubbled to the surface, and today he wrote poetry. Poetry, however, did not fit into his current ideas about work, and so that excellent creativity was hardly counted at all.

As for Ruburt, he became overconcerned about work because of the contracts (for Mass Events and God of Jane, which we have yet to sign with Prentice-Hall), and the foreign hassles. It would be nice if you took it for granted that all of those issues were also being creatively worked out to your advantage. He is still somewhat afraid of relaxing. It makes him feel guilty. His body is responding, however, so let him remember that creativity is playful, and that it always surfaces when he allows his mind to drop its worries.

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.

Jane has been doing 3” × 6” sketches in concert with her poetry about nature. She works in brilliant simple colors, obtaining her effects with porous pens whose inks she can partially blend with water. I’d like to frame some of those little pieces, for visually they present the same qualities her poetry does verbally. We usually keep her sketches covered, however, since their colors begin to fade after a few weeks’ exposure to light.