“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I have difficulty believing it even when I write it—but eight months have passed since Jane held her last session for Dreams, the 928th, on November 12, 1980. [...] During this period Jane gave two regular nonbook sessions [on November 26, 1980, and on January 5, 1981], plus 48 private sessions, so we’ve been busy! Out of that private total, Seth devoted 25 sessions, either completely or in part, to her “sinful-self” material. Jane delivered the introductory session on that subject on March 11 of this year, and I’ll be quoting from it in a note. The next 24 sessions on the sinful-self material came through in a concentrated block from April 14 to July 13. I also plan to excerpt several of those sessions for notes, and to quote a number of times from Jane’s personal journals for 1980 and 1981. In other words, these opening notes for the 931st session are going to be long ones.

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. [...] He repeated his approval in our 63rd private session, held on July 13.

Jane’s connections and challenges with religion across lifetimes are obvious among her dream of being a nun, the “nightmarish experience”⁸ she had two nights later, and the subject matter of the private session she gave on the evening of March 11. In that session Seth used her nightmare as the basis for a discussion of her life as a nun, mentioned her grandfather, and began the “sinful-self” material I referred to at the beginning of the notes for this 931st session. His information on the sinful self opened up a very important development in Jane’s [and my own] search for an understanding of her symptoms, and I’m presenting excerpts from that session in Note 9. [Before long, I realized that I could use notes to carry portions of several more sessions on the sinful self.]

5. For that matter, I’ve often told my wife that it would be all right with me if she decided to give up the sessions entirely—for good—period. [...] More than once I’ve asked her if she keeps the sessions going just for me. Jane comes first with me—not the sessions, or anything else she might do. [...] Once again I recalled Seth’s statement in Chapter 5 of Dreams, in Volume 1. See Session 899 for February 6, 1980: “But the purpose of your life, and each life, is in its being (intently). That being may include certain actions, but the acts themselves are only important in that they spring out of the essence of your life, which simply by being is bound to fulfill its purposes.”

For the first time ever since Jane began the sessions over 17 years ago, in December 1963, I got the chills when Seth delivered a passage—for when he remarked that without some such creative psychic expansion as the sessions “Ruburt would have felt unable to continue the particular brand of his existence,” I surely thought he meant that Jane could have chosen to die. I didn’t mention this to her after the session, and she seemed to have no such reaction when she read the typed session the next day. [...]

[...] Seth discussed his “seemingly contradictory material” throughout Session 918, which is the last session for Chapter 8 of Dreams, and up to 9:46 in Session 919 for Chapter 9. While researching this little note, I was once again startled to realize that Jane had delivered those two sessions over 13 months ago—early in June 1980.

Jane’s last session for this chapter of Dreams is the 928th; she came through with it eight months ago. Since then I’ve packed full these notes for Session 931, in order to round out our personal, professional, and secular situations—yet, looking back, I wonder if I’ve properly put everything in perspective: There are other sessions I could have quoted instead of the ones chosen, other notes I could have written; there are other questions Jane and I could have asked, and, perhaps, other conclusions we could have drawn.

One of those periods of delay in Jane’s delivering the sessions for Mass Events lasted for 42 weeks, or 9½ months; in that book see the opening notes for Session 831, in Chapter 5. This hiatus in Chapter 9 of Dreams lasted for eight months, between sessions 928 and 931.

6. Seth went on to say in that session for February 17, 1980: “The only other times there are any such difficulties also involve responsibility, when he concentrates upon his responsibility to hold the sessions—that is, when he focuses upon need, function, or utility as separate from other issues involved. Such feelings can then for a while override his natural inclinations, his natural enjoyment and excitement with which he otherwise views our sessions.

Following Session 928, Jane, even with Seth’s obvious attempts to help, and with her obvious willingness to obtain and accept that help, remained housebound, as I came to think of her condition. She gave up walking with the aid of her typing table on November 16, according to my notes for the private session of that date.