“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Session 906, in which Seth discussed viruses and the social aspects of many diseases, turned on Jane so much that the next day she wrote several additional pages on those subjects. The material came from both Seth and “herself,” and I added it to the notes for that session. It’s quite frustrating that we have no room in Dreams for such interesting information. Perhaps Seth will develop it in another work. In putting together the Seth books most of my decisions concern what to leave out, rather than what to include.

While Jane has been enjoying many periods of ease and relaxation, she’s also had bouts of blueness over her general stiffness and walking difficulties [her “symptoms”]. But she’s finally dispensed with the last stages of her cold, which had turned out to be much heavier than mine, and is feeling a resurgence of energy for the sessions. Her own work has been going well for the most part, however—she expects to finish Chapter 12 of God of Jane tomorrow. Because of her concentration on that hook she hasn’t done much on her book of poetry, If We Live Again, since late February; and as I mentioned in the Preface for Dreams, she laid aside her third Seven novel, Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time, in May 1979 when she began God of Jane. As for myself, I’ve progressed to working with Session 860 [for June 13, 1979], which bridges chapters 8 and 9 in Mass Events.

Today Jane reread her recent sessions for Dreams; she wanted to resume work on the book tonight, and picked up on it from Seth throughout the day. She told me bits of the material at times, but I didn’t retain them. [She also relayed to me Seth’s comments about an article on bird migration that I read to her while we were having lunch, but I lost those too.] Jane called me early for the session—at 8:20, while I was still busy with Mass Events. She wanted to get started: “I still feel nervous about going back to the book….”

(To me, loudly:) “You are still learning. Your work is still developing. How truly unfortunate you would be if that were not the case! There is always a kind of artistic dissatisfaction that any true artist feels with work that is completed, for he is always aware of the tug and pull, and the tension, between the sensed ideal and its manifestation. In a certain fashion the artist is looking for a creative solution to a sensed but never clearly stated problem or challenge, and it is an adventure that is literally unending. It must be one that has no clearly stated destination, in usual terms. In the most basic of ways, the artist cannot say where he is going, for if he knows ahead of time he is not creating but copying.

“The true artist is involved with the inner workings of himself with the universe—a choice, I remind you, that he or she has made, and so often the artist does indeed forsake the recognized roads of recognition. And more, seeing that, he often does not know how to assess his own progress, since his journey has no recognizable creative destination. By its nature art basically is meant to put each artist of whatever kind into harmony with the universe, for the artist draws upon the same creative energy from which birth emerges.”

Even in modern terms, our psychological and medical knowledge of mind and brain have added more complications to the doctrine of free will, yet it survives and grows. And all the while I worked on this note, I felt strong connections involving free will, determinism, and probable realities—connections largely unexpressed and unexplored in our world’s societies.