“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

A fourth entry had been made at Three Mile Island in November, and a fifth, with a 14-man crew, was projected for December 11. We followed the news accounts of the negotiations between the United States and Iran for the release of the hostages, and of the war between Iran and Iraq. Since Jane couldn’t leave the house by herself, let alone go holiday shopping, she had a close friend buy the Christmas presents she had in mind for me. My wife did her own wrapping, though, working at it in her writing room after warning me to stay away until she was through. [With eyes averted, I had to carry my own presents to a closet, where I deposited them until Christmas Eve.] Then late in December the page proofs for Mass Events arrived for our checking. This is the last major stage we’re concerned with before a book is printed, other than okaying routine components like frontmatter proofs—meaning the table of contents, dedications, quotations from Seth and Jane, and so forth—and the index.

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 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.

“We have to go beyond that—back to stressing the creative larger-than-life aspects. Otherwise all we have is a better problem-solving framework…. I’ve rejected all that kind of hash projected onto Seth’s books by others or myself—the assumptions that Seth must prove himself as a problem-solver—or the importance of functionalism over art. The larger view is that art, by being itself, is bigger than life while springing from it; that Seth’s and my books go beyond that simply by being themselves. They automatically put people in a different, vaster psychological space, another frame of reference, in which a good number of problems vanish or simply do not apply….

“In that regard, Ruburt’s creativity kept struggling for its own growth and value fulfillment. His psychic recognition or initiation represented a remarkable breakthrough, meant to give him that additional psychic room that would insure the continued expansion of the abilities of the natural self. The sinful-self concept is a personal one for each who holds it, but it is also projected outward into the entire species, of course, until the whole world seems tainted.

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