“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“Yesterday while checking the page proofs for Mass Events I got the feeling that that book really bothered me, served as a focal point. My eye troubles started the same spring that Seth started dictating it [in 1977]; I was doing [my world-view book on William] James; and those people were picketing Prentice-Hall’s offices in New York City because of the Seth material. The fact had escaped me earlier that Mass Events represented Seth’s and my direct attack on official dictums—or so it seemed to me. Before, we sort of did it by inference.

“I accept everything in the book, but I think I felt that if I was going to tell it like it was—and I was, was determined to—then I also needed more protection from the world, and began cutting down mobility again. My idea is that the eyes get bad after the muscular strain reaches a certain point. The idea [of protection] also came back after reading a book on William James that a friend gave us for Christmas. [James’s] attitudes and mine so often seem similar—that he was determined to be daring, press ahead no matter what, explore consciousness—while at the same time being attracted to safety, disliking controversy, wanting peace, etc. I think I am that way. The long breaks when Seth didn’t dictate [book work] may have come when I got particularly concerned about the material, the wisdom of presenting it to the world.

15. I tell Jane that each book she does is her best—and I mean it each time, for each one is. The Seth books sell better, however, than do her “own” books: How to Develop Your ESP Power, Adventures in Consciousness, Psychic Politics, Cézanne and James, her Oversoul Seven novels, Dialogues and Emir. (See the opening notes for this 931st session, as well as Note 10, for my description of the demise of Emir.) Now Jane adds God of Jane to her list, with If We Live Again to follow in a few months.