“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Seth discussed generalized sinful-self material in only one of the five private sessions Jane has held since she came through with the 931st session for Dreams three weeks ago.¹ In some respects lately she’s felt a bit more at ease.²

We received the page proofs for If We Live Again on the last day of July. They’re very easy for Jane to check, compared to those for her other books.

This afternoon we had a long discussion about the conflicts we often feel between our natural desires for creative privacy and the fact that our works go out into the world. Each of us has a strong sense of responsibility toward those who read our books. Involved here also is Jane’s sinful self and “its” attitude concerning the requests she receives to go public through radio and television interviews, lectures, records, tapes, and so forth. She turned away from media attention many years ago. It took me some time after she’d started delivering the Seth material to realize that in spite of her outgoing, friendly nature, Jane is as much a private person as I am.)

1. For the record only: Inclusive from Session 919 (June 9, 1980) to Session 932 (August 4, 1981), almost 14 months passed while we had Chapter 9 in progress. During that time Jane held four book sessions, with small portions of three of them being deleted, or private; 10 regular nonbook sessions, with brief sections of four of those being private; and 68 completely private sessions. Of that last total, she devoted 13 sessions to material on the magical approach to reality, and 27 to the subject of the sinful self. She came through with 82 sessions, then, during the production of Chapter 9.

Over the past year or so I’d become more and more concerned about what I could do if a nighttime emergency—like a fire—trapped Jane and me in our bedroom. Because of the conventional ranch-style floor plan of the hill house, our bedroom is isolated from the front and back doors; we reach it at the end of a hall opening off the living room. We had no door at the entrance to the hall. A blaze anywhere in the central section of the house, with its heat, gas, and smoke, could easily prevent me from reaching the front or back door as I sought to carry Jane to safety. (It would be useless to try to push her in her chair.)

The windows in our bedroom are rather small. Even if I could manage to force Jane out of one of them, in an act of desperation, she would almost certainly be injured as she fell to the ground amid the tangle of juniper shrubs growing below.

I’d told myself to forget it each time I caught myself worrying that way—but finally, more concerned than ever about Jane’s physical condition, I gave up. With more than a little wry humor over what I considered to be a failure of belief on my part, I took action: Late in July I had a contractor, who is a friend of ours and well acquainted with Jane’s situation, install a heavy outside door in a bedroom wall, and construct the necessary step to the ground. He also hung another heavy door at the living-room entrance to the hall; we’re to keep that one closed at night. I had our friend position smoke alarms throughout the house.

Characteristically, Jane said little about the improvements once I’d explained to her why I was having them made. And—belief or no—I judged the success of the changes by the fact that my worries disappeared as soon as they were completed.