“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The very next day we were distracted: We received back from our publisher the film option contracts for The Education of Oversoul Seven. The filmmaker required certain additions for legal reasons; we had to have our attorney renotarize the contracts. On the same day I returned them to Prentice-Hall, I also sent in Jane’s signed contract for If We Live Again—and the mail brought us the copy-edited manuscript for God of Jane.

Even though she wasn’t walking, Jane continued taking her steps between her office chair and the living-room couch, from which she was giving most of her sessions those days. As December came she stopped getting into the shower because of the trouble she had maneuvering in the bathroom, so I began helping her take sponge baths instead. Her physical condition was obviously intimately related to her creative condition. Even the simple act of writing was becoming increasingly difficult for her.¹ On December 4 I sent back to our publisher the corrected copy-edited manuscript for God of Jane. And late that month, and for the very first time, Jane allowed me to push her in her chair in front of company—a Friday-night group of friends, one reminiscent of the free, exuberant gatherings we used to have every weekend in our downtown apartments. Not that all of our friends hadn’t known of Jane’s physical symptoms for some time, but that Jane, with her innocence and determination—and yes, her mystical view of temporal reality²—had for the most part refused to put herself on display, as she termed it: She felt that she should offer something better to herself and to others, even with all of the intensely creative work she’d done for herself and for others over the last 17 years.

Jane did feel considerably better by the time the page proofs for God of Jane reached us in mid-January. We corrected those over the time our new president was sworn into office on the 20th, and the 52 American hostages were simultaneously released after 444 days of captivity. We found the workings of our national consciousness to be both mightily creative and terribly frustrating in numerous ways. I thought the simple services in which our President and Vice-President were sworn into office were extremely moving: Unable to speak because of my emotion, I sat beside Jane on the couch while we watched the ceremonies on television, and had soup and crackers for lunch. At the same time, the hostages were “almost free” in Iran, aboard their plane taxiing into takeoff position at Iran’s Tehran airport. When our national anthem was sung I sat as though mesmerized, my eyes wet, hoping and praying [trite words!] for our country, for our defeated President, for his successor, and for the hostages. Then the hostages’ plane was in the air, flying toward Algiers, in North Africa.

“Oh God, I hope it all works out,” Jane said.

As if manufacturing tiny, intensely personal counterparts to those large events, Jane and I finished checking the proofs for God of Jane; she resumed work on her essays, and some new poetry, for If We Live Again; I painted, answered a lot of mail, and helped her continue our private sessions. And those acts of ours, I thought, while so small compared to the national dramas being enacted, actually were our contribution to those great plays. Even the fact that by January 26 my wife hadn’t walked with her typing table for ten weeks played its part. I felt that connection, but couldn’t describe very well what I meant. On that same day back went God of Jane to the publisher, for the last time.

The day after that session for March 11 was held we received a jolt: Eleanor Friede, Jane’s editor at Delacorte Press, informed us that Jane’s book, Emir’s Education in the Proper Use of Magical Powers, was being remaindered—taken off the market because in the publisher’s view it wasn’t selling enough copies. Eleanor’s protests at the action had done no good. We were given the chance to buy as many copies as we wanted to, at a very low price per book. We’d known that Emir hadn’t been setting any records since its publication in September 1979, but we’d also thought the book’s sales were respectable enough that the people at Delacorte Press would keep it in print until it became better known. Perhaps our shock came about because we’d become spoiled without realizing it, but of Jane’s 14 books Emir¹⁰ is the first one to be withdrawn—and, ironically, the last one she’d had published. That status would soon change, however, when Mass Events and God of Jane reached the marketplace.

In the session itself, Seth barely began an answer to my question. Instead he went into considerable detail as to how Jane could write a “psychic statement of intentions,” so that her sinful self would know exactly what she wanted out of life. She started work on it the next day. That same day, I congratulated her when our first published copy of God of Jane reached us; that excellent book had followed Mass Events all the way through the publishing process. I told Jane that God of Jane is her best book yet, and that I hope it does well in the marketplace.¹⁵ Yet I sadly noticed that the book’s appearance led to another intensification of her symptoms—the same reaction she’d had when we received our first copy of Mass Events 25 days ago. We were to discover very soon that her sinful self had put together the publication of the two books, my question of last night, and Seth’s own suggestion, to form an emotional trigger.

“Our explorations involved no second-handed evidence handed down by others, but the direct personal encounter of our consciousness and being with the vast elements of the unknown—a meeting of the self (human and vulnerable) with the psychological realms of gods and eternities; giant realms of mind that our nature felt attracted to … and [was] uniquely equipped to perceive.

There was no doubt about it, though: As if they had a collective life of their own, Jane’s symptoms continued to clamp down after the publication of Mass Events and God of Jane. Her feet became more and more swollen, for instance; she could take the few steps between her chair and the couch only with much difficulty. A number of times she refused my offers—and those of others—to get her medical help. The reason I don’t write more in these notes about doctors and the medical profession is that I have nothing to write about. Jane, with that exquisite stubbornness she can display, simply wouldn’t cooperate in that fashion. We studied her own sinful-self material as she typed it. Again and again we scrutinized all of those elements that we thought were bound up in her symptoms: choice, fear of abandonment and the need for self-protection, penance, and the controversial nature of her gifts. July 1981 came. On the evening of the 4th—yes, we “worked” on the holiday because Jane felt like having a session, and because “time” had become so precious to us—Seth came through with some very interesting new material as a result of our questioning.¹⁸

“Finish checking copy-edited manuscript of God of Jane this afternoon. Feel this important…. As I finish, I realize how much physical activity and energy is required for even that seemingly sedentary task, for I’ve been uncomfortable, sitting, switching my weight, body soreish, eyes not seeing properly and so forth…. But in some newish way I seemed to understand how much seemingly mental work is dependent upon physical vigor, flexibility and so forth; and then rather strongly—emotionally it came to me that I’d thought it my duty to clamp down physically, to cut down mobility in order to … have mobility as a writer; that is, to sit down, cut down on impulses, distractions, to make sure I’d ‘do my work,’ pursue my goal undeviatingly; that new [book] contracts instantly led me to that kind of behavior and that I really see that such behavior carried to its extremes would end up smothering my writing, defeating the purposes it (seemingly) meant to protect. But I did fear that impulses and body motion were … distractions to work…. Now I see how much impulses are conducive … to just typing, for God’s sake; imagine typing and seeing with ease, just thinking about what I’m thinking about, instead of trying to get my fingers on the proper keys. I feel as if I’m on to something here … feel some relaxation. If this is the case, the entire process could be changed around quite quickly, of course, toward mobility. I’m not writing here tonight about the reasons behind such behavior—many ideas—but did want to get something down now….”

“In fact, Seth gave us Framework 1 and 2 stuff in there, to help me. I did grab hold several times, and with the God of Jane book, the new inspiration there and the material on following impulses, made some very good improvements. [Rob’s emphasis:] But far more than Rob from the beginning, I was nervous and anxious about directly coming out with many of the ideas—which at the same time I fervently and even passionately believe in…. I may fear that if you go too far … telling it like it is … that the establishment will just cut off your platform … or that people will stop buying the books … something like … biting the hand that feeds you. You can only go so far. Yet I’ve always known that these ideas conflicted with official ones. It’s just that [earlier our] ‘attack’ was less direct.

“I equate all of this with three events: a movie I saw on TV the night before last in which the hero finally saw through the god of his people; a Raggedy Ann doll Rob found in the backyard the other day and brought in (it was probably dragged there by a dog, its right arm is missing)—but it reminded me of my old Susie; and part of a review I read yesterday of a book about death.

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.

“The main issues with which the sinful self was concerned were focused most clearly in Mass Events and God of Jane,” Seth told us, “since more than the other books they represent a direct confrontation, ‘attacking’ the very legitimacy of the entire concept of sin and evil, insisting more dramatically on the good intent of man’s basic impulses…. [Ruburt’s] sinful-self explanation represents a fascinating psychological document in that regard, and also shows the self’s mobility and willingness to learn and change—once the intent is made to take a stand.