“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

See the opening notes for Session 918, which Jane held on June 2 for Chapter 8 of Dreams. I referred to the strong local opposition to venting radioactive krypton gas from the contaminated containment building at Three Mile Island. An estimated several thousand people, not trusting the credibility of statements about safety that had been made by federal and private officials, left the area before company technicians finally began the long-delayed venting on June 29. All went well: The radiation released into the atmosphere was far below permissible limits. Surprisingly, the procedure was completed in only 13 days—considerably less than the estimated three to four weeks required for the job. The still-wary populace returned. Twelve days after the venting was completed, two engineers from TMI entered the enormous containment building on the first brief inspection trip to gather photographic, radiation, and other data.

By the fourth week in July, a few days after finishing God of Jane, Jane was reading over the 17 chapters she’d done on her third Seven novel, Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time.³ She made notes for Seven Three, as she called it. Then she wrote in her journal on the 24th: “I was looking over Seven Three for the first time in 14 months when sub rights called about the movie contract for the first Seven—so that’s no coincidence! May finish the third Seven next. Pleased with what I’ve read so far!”

Jane’s worsening situation through June and July, then, prepared her to accept my suggestion that Seth could help her. She put aside the first session for Chapter 9 of Dreams, and began Seth’s sessions on the magical approach to reality. As Seth remarked on August 6, when he gave his first session on the subject: “When Ruburt finished his project [God of Jane], he found himself with all of that time that was supposed to be used. He also became aware of his limitations, physically speaking: There was not much, it seemed, he could do but work, so he took the rational approach—and it says that to solve the problem you worry about it.”

See Note 7, in which I used Jane’s poem as a focus around which to offer certain pieces. Indeed, more and more as I worked on these notes for Chapter 9 of Dreams, I saw how necessary it was that I write an Introduction for the book itself—to create a framework for the presentation of all of the material in it from our private and professional lives. Of course, I couldn’t yet know everything that such a project ought to contain. Jane had mentioned a number of times that she’d help me with it. And she was playing around with the idea of a Seth book on the magical approach.

Early in September Tam mailed back to us, for our approval, the copy-edited 484-page manuscript for Mass Events. An independent reader had gone over our labors line by line, checking for everything from grammar and contradictions to philosophy, “flagging” questions for us by noting them on slips of pink paper taped to the appropriate manuscript pages. Along with our other projects—including answering a steady flow of letters—Jane and I spent the month going over Mass Events, accepting some suggestions but rejecting many others. On the 13th we received from Sue Watkins our first copy of Volume 1 of Conversations With Seth, Sue’s excellent account of the ESP classes Jane used to hold in one of the two apartments we rented in downtown Elmira, before we moved to the hill house outside of town in 1975. Sue was now working on the last two chapters of the second and last volume of Conversations. Early in October I returned Mass Events to our publisher once more; it was ready to be set in type. Jane kept at her poetry and essays right into that first week in October, while her physical improvements continued to show in a modest way. Her walking especially was better, and I was able to take her on an occasional drive in the beautiful country.

That first, July 23rd entry at Three Mile Island took place on day 263 of the seizing of the American hostages in Iran. See Note 1 for Session 919, in Chapter 7 of Dreams, wherein I reviewed not only Iran’s concern over the Russian invasion of its eastern neighbor, Afghanistan, in late December 1979, but also Iran’s border clashes with its western neighbor, Iraq, during the past year. Finally, on September 23 [day 325 of the hostage situation], the inevitable happened in the very unstable Middle East: Amid that explosive mixture of secular and religious national consciousnesses “at work” there, Iraq launched an outright invasion of Iran. Quickly Iraq began to gobble up large portions of Iranian territory. The whole Western world became alarmed, for economic reasons as well as others.

At the beginning of the notes for this 920th session I wrote that the session isn’t dictation for Dreams. Yet it is, of course, since in it Seth illuminates from still another perspective his concept of value fulfillment.⁸ The session grew out of the encounter we had yesterday afternoon with an unexpected visitor from out of state. Seth hardly mentions the individual involved, however, but instead goes into the subject of mental illness in more inclusive terms. I see many correlations between this evening’s material and that in Session 917 for Chapter 8; there, among other things, Seth had discussed the reasoning mind, the imaginative mind, and schizophrenia. That session had been triggered, at least in part, by a letter Jane had found to be quite upsetting.

When they’re published the reader will be able to see that she touched upon her physical hassles in Chapter 17 of God of Jane, for example, and referred to them in her Introduction for Mass Events. She didn’t actively object when I began to mention them more extensively in the notes for Dreams. But as Seth said in Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality, while discussing her goals in life: “The power of his (Ruburt’s) will is indeed awesome, and he is just beginning to feel it.” In that volume, see Session 713 for October 21, 1974. And in larger terms, if Jane is at all correct in her expression of the Seth material, then each action we’ve taken in connection with her symptoms has been valid and creative, just as each action we have yet to take will be.

3. In Chapter 6 for Volume 1 of Dreams, see Session 907.

4. In Chapter 2 for Volume 1 of Dreams, see the opening notes for Session 885.

5. Seth hardly flattered us in this first session. He also gave us a clue as to how Jane delivers certain sessions for him. To begin with, however, his magical-approach information reminded me at once of the two thoughts Jane had picked up from him back on May 12, the day she held the 915th session for Chapter 8. I’m stressing these points because I think they’re important: “Alone, reason finally becomes unreasonable. Alone, imagination finally becomes less imaginative over time.” Nine days later, Seth finally gave a little information relevant to Jane’s insights; see the 917th session after 9:23.

6. In Chapter 8 of Dreams, see the opening notes for Session 915.

“I can envision Seth’s material expanding almost endlessly just on a day-to-day basis, as he deals with events in the lives of Jane and me—and this idea conveys nothing about news of his reactions to and interactions with events on various levels of his own reality, plus other realities he may be able to reach. In Chapter 8 of Dreams, when I asked Seth what he was going to do for the rest of the evening (in our terms), he replied: ‘I am going to refresh myself by diving into some new concepts, for there are new concepts for me also, of course, and I dive into them from many positions all the time as well.’ (See the conclusion of Session 916 for May 14, 1980.) Think of the questions one could ask him relative to just this one statement! Such provocative assertions leave behind them unsatisfied voids of curiosity. Actually, most of his information does, regardless of subject matter. But obviously, if Seth did take up every moment of our temporal lives with personal material, all else would be probable.”

8. In the unpublished 842nd session for March 21, 1979, which he gave in the middle of producing the sessions for Chapter 6 of Mass Events, Seth had this to say:

9. I do not mean the word “disturbed” to be derogatory in any sense at all. Instead I refer only to a behavioral departure from the generally accepted “norm.” As Seth said in Session 917, which was held last May 21 for Chapter 8 of Dreams: