“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This noon Jane and I signed our wills, with our attorney and his wife serving as witnesses. Jane had been somewhat depressed this morning, and her writing hadn’t gone well. The obvious implications posed by the wills did nothing to cheer her up. ¹ Still, trusting her impulses, she slept for a couple of hours this afternoon—then, perversely, wasn’t happy with herself for doing so when she woke up. She was quieter than usual through supper, although she said she wanted to hold the session.

Even though making our wills led us to think of our deaths, in ordinary terms, still that making implies both order and things accomplished during our lifetimes. We have achieved a situation beneficial to all—for Jane’s will and my own each declares that upon the death of the survivor of the two of us, our estate is to be donated to the Manuscripts and Archives division of Yale University Library, in New Haven, Connecticut. Our physical effects, even including the hill house and the car, are few. But our creative work is everything, and so it, and whatever pertains to it, go to a place where all will be preserved and protected, yet made available for study by researchers and lay people alike as it is transmitted there.

The collection will include our family trees; my father’s journals and photographs; Jane’s and my own grade-school, high-school, college, and family data; our youthful creative efforts in writing and painting; the comic books and other commercial artwork I produced; our early published and unpublished short stories; my original notes for the sessions; session transcripts, whether published or unpublished, “regular,” private, or from ESP class; tapes, including those made in class of Jane speaking for Seth and/or singing in Sumari; our notes, dream records, journals, and manuscripts; our sketches and paintings; Jane’s extensive poetry; our business correspondence; books, contracts, and files; newsletters about the Seth material, published in the United States and abroad (independently of Jane and me); the greater number of letters from readers—in short, a mass of material showing how our separate beginnings flowed together and resulted in the production of a joint lifework.

At first we thought of keeping the collection closed until after our deaths, as donors usually request to be done, but we’ve decided to make everything accessible as soon as we can, both for scholarship and for study by the public. To make this possible, we’ll be transferring copies of many of our papers and tapes to the library while keeping the originals with us to work with during our lifetimes. This decision is especially apropos where we have but one copy of the material in question: We like knowing that “security copies” will be on file elsewhere—as with Jane’s journals, for example, and many of my own notes.

Jane’s editor, Tam Mossman, who graduated from Yale, helped us contact officials at Sterling Memorial a year ago (in December 1978). Jane and I completed arrangements after that, when those at the library explained how our collection would complement others already there. An archivist from Manuscripts and Archives has visited us to get a rough idea of the amount of material we have to offer. We don’t know when our work will actually be ready for study: First we must get it to the library, and then the staff must see to its processing—which will be quite a project in itself. Jane and I are most pleased that the Seth material and everything connected with it are to be preserved.