“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Two weeks later, on March 3, Jane and I really received a surprise through a friend who lives on the California coast: news of a Spanish-language translation of Jane’s first book, How to Develop Your ESP Power. The edition was printed in Mexico and is on sale in that country and on our West Coast. Our friend has a Mexican friend who showed him a copy of the book. Jane and I didn’t know what to think, since the American publisher of ESP Power, Frederick Fell Publishers, Inc., hadn’t advised us that a translation into Spanish had been authorized. The almost wordless quality of our surprise reminded me of our feelings of a year and a half ago, when we’d learned that the Dutch firm, Ankh-Hermes, had published an abridged edition of Seth Speaks in that language, without our permission.⁷

On April 12 the space shuttle Columbia was launched into orbit around the earth, and I thought that Jane was complementing that obvious exploration of outside space by exploring inner space with the only vehicle she had available—her own mind. That same day, Seth agreed that her new book idea was a good one. Somewhere in here we received from our friend in California the photocopies I’d asked him to obtain, of the frontmatter for the Spanish-language edition of ESP Power. So the book was out in Spanish, we saw—but we were so preoccupied with Jane’s symptoms and related matters that we let the photocopies lie on a shelf. During this time, we had been often rereading Seth’s information on the sinful self as he’d given it on March 11. [See Note 9 for this session.] That material had deeply touched us. The result was that on April 14, the day Columbia landed, Seth initiated a long series of sessions on both Jane’s own sinful self, and that quality in general. The very next evening Jane allowed him to come through with some extremely important material.¹³

7. In Chapter 2 of Dreams, in Volume 1, see my account of the Ankh-Hermes affair, as given in Note 1 for Session 885. We didn’t know whether ESP Power had been published without our American publisher’s consent—but there we were, confronted by another puzzling development involving a foreign-language edition of one of Jane’s books. At once I wrote to our California friend, asking him to obtain from his friend photocopies of three pages in the frontmatter of ESP Power: the title page, the table of contents, and the page that nobody reads, containing the information on copyright, permission for translation, and the name of the Mexican publishing firm.

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.

I’ve noted before that Seth himself has no reservations at all about expressing reincarnational material. Listening to some of the tapes students made in Jane’s ESP class—in the early ‘70s, say—I hear Seth being allowed to spontaneously give regular students and first-time visitors often quite detailed and penetrating insights into their other lives; explaining how events and emotions from other existences can intermix with their counterparts in present lives. Jane still picks up such information from others, but now she seldom expresses it through Seth. I think her deep concern about leading others astray, related as it is to her early religious training, is the inhibiting force here. Then see Notes 9 and 19 for this session; their contents show that she hasn’t closed a certain window into the dream state, either.