“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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shock came about because we’d become spoiled without realizing it, but of Jane’s 14 books Emir¹⁰ is the first one to be withdrawn—and, ironically, the last one she’d had published.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.

Three days later, after a final checking, I mailed Jane’s book of poetry to Tam Mossman at Prentice-Hall. Since she wouldn’t be working with that project for some little time now, Jane’s restless creative mind began to play with other ideas. Even though she often didn’t feel well, a portion of her creativity led her to have dreams of walking and dancing, of being completely healed physically. She wrote more poetry. She painted. And once again she considered a book featuring Seth’s sessions on the magical approach to reality, the series he’d given through August and September of last year.¹²

By now it must be plain to the reader that Seth’s material on the sinful self—any sinful self, or all of them—could very well be considered the other side of his information on the magical approach to reality. I was all too aware of an uncomfortable dichotomy. Indeed, how irritating it was, I thought, that for Jane and me at least the magical self seemed to be so far removed from daily reality, while the sinful self was so close! Reaching out to the magical self could be thought of as some theoretically attainable goal—but the sinful self was right there, functioning within the most intimate areas of personal life. For how many others is the same situation true? Seth, I knew, would simply say that the magical self is just as real and close as any other self. The challenge for the individual is to know and to believe that, to clear unwanted growth from around the magical self so that it can bloom unimpeded….

Along with our shock came elation. Here, we congratulated ourselves, lay bared all of those beliefs and motivations that for years had been hidden and operative beneath Jane’s symptoms: Here were the real reasons—now we could eradicate her physical hassles! Jane’s own sinful-self revelations certainly complemented Seth’s, which in turn, we thought, were the other side of his material on the magical approach to reality.

Once again, we had no guidelines on how to use Jane’s material, except to trust that we’d do the best we could. Achieving results could take a while. “If you do that book on the magical approach,” I asked her, “are you going to use all this stuff on the sinful self, or what?” Jane didn’t know. She did know that she’d been considering an outline for a book on the magical approach. In the meantime, the plan that spontaneously came to me on that last day of her own effort, on June 22, was to present a page or two of her sinful-self material here, then repeat it, along with other excerpts, in the Introduction I’ve already mentioned that I must write for Dreams.¹⁷

By July 8 we’d accumulated 61 fully private sessions since Jane had given the first session for this chapter of Dreams, the 919th, on June 9, 1980. [During that 13-month period we also held 10 regular nonbook sessions and one more book session.] As she began to study that mass of private material on the 8th, Jane abruptly laid it aside to spontaneously write a complete outline for a book on Seth’s magical approach to reality. She’d had many such impulses since giving the first session on that subject 11 months ago, and I’d been hoping she would try the venture. Seth had announced as recently as four days ago that he’s heartily in favor of the project. He repeated his approval in our 63rd private session, held on July 13.

It developed, however, that Jane’s reincarnational adventure might end up doing double duty: Not only had it given her insights concerning her sinful self, but now she picked up from Seth that his remarks about it could result in dictation for Dreams. She’d been looking over sessions for the book at various times lately, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised. She asked if I’d mind work on Dreams this evening, and I said of course not—that she and Seth have the absolute freedom to talk about anything at all. If Seth did discuss her experience, Jane replied, it would be in connection with “time overlays.” She wasn’t nervous about going back to Dreams. She said that dictation for it wouldn’t mean she was giving up on private material, or on her projected book on the magical approach, either.

Jane’s nature has even led me to speculate more than once that in most basic terms she may be visiting our probable reality from one that’s actually far more native to her nonphysical entity, or whole self. I don’t mean that as a physical creature she has magically switched temporal realities, but that she’s closely allied with that version of herself in that other reality. When I mention this to her, she nods but says little. Jane’s “mission” (a term she wouldn’t use) would be to give us not only greater insight into what our species has done within our historical context, both for better and for worse, but to signal what we can do—to open up unexpected vistas before us, to encourage us to explore those realms far more actively than we have so far.

“His idea of a project on the magical approach now is excellent, for it suggests a new concentration or focus.”