“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Last month, in the opening notes for Session 931, in Chapter 9, I recorded that on July 8 Jane spontaneously wrote “a complete outline for a book on Seth’s magical approach to reality.” Actually, we’ve been quite aware of the potential of such an idea ever since Seth began that material a year ago.³ After supper this evening we went over the loose-leaf notebook of information Jane has accumulated for The Magical Approach to Reality: A Seth Book, and discussed how she could follow her outline in putting all of that material—on our dreams, psychic events and insights, her poetry and our essays—together with Seth’s private sessions on the magical approach. She’d had trouble doing that at various times in the past year. Such a book would involve the publication of much Seth material that could either lie in our files for a long time, or never be published. I now feel that many of those sessions aren’t so private after all, and can help others. The more I talked about the idea the better I liked it. Jane seemed to pick up on my own enthusiasm.

Then just before session time, I mentioned my question about her sinful self’s reactions to our efforts to help her in recent weeks. We have yet to see the kind of physical response we want, and I wanted to know if we’d prompted her sinful self to step up its attempts to keep her “under control.” I explained that I think Seth’s and our own endeavors on her behalf had been negated each time because we’d alerted her sinful self’s fears—making it try harder to protect her according to its own very restrictive orientation.

As he’d hinted in his greeting this evening, Seth did have some material for us—regardless of my wife’s announced disinterest—and that information contained some surprises. See Note 4 for the rest of the session.)

1. Recently I asked Jane if Seth could give us some information on the consciousness connected with nuclear energy—a fascinating question I’ve often speculated about—and she promised me that he’d discuss it soon. I think his material will certainly include many original insights into the whole subject of consciousness-and-energy in general, as well as into the role of consciousness in events like the accident at Three Mile Island. I reminded Jane that some time ago Seth had remarked that as physical creatures we human beings cannot bear to directly confront the basic, vast, unimaginably awesome and creative consciousness of All That Is. Since we cannot bear to face the great raw power of nuclear energy either, I’ve often wondered whether this situation can be an earthly, imperfect and time-ridden analog to what must be the reality of All That Is.

(A note: Six years have passed since Jane delivered the passage I was trying to recall. It’s from Session 747 for May 14, 1975, and I found that I had quoted portions of the session in Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality: See Note 11 for Session 742. In essence my memory had been fairly accurate—yet rereading Seth’s material was like a revelation to me. I told Jane that I don’t think anyone else has ever said it as well. Through Seth she expressed the heart of her mystical knowledge:

2. Sometimes together, sometimes separately, Jane and I listen to portions of the tapes students had made of the sessions and other exciting happenings in her ESP classes. I’d hardly put into shape for Session 933 my musings about the workings of consciousness than I heard Seth come through with these two passages; at once they reminded me of what I’d just been writing about.

The first quotation is from material Seth gave class members on November 3, 1970 (almost 11 years ago):

Most of our tapes are dated—but not the one containing the session I’m quoting from below. I estimate that Seth gave this information to a group of visitors who attended a class some time in 1974 (or seven years ago):

4. (Seth at 9:07:) “Your earlier comment (about Jane’s sinful self) is pertinent. Remember, again, that the sinful-self designation is a method of identifying certain attitudes. Those attitudes are indeed changing.

(“Thank you, Seth.”

End at 9:25 P.M. The “crisis point” Seth referred to revolved around the continuous efforts Jane and I had been making to help her; see the opening notes for the session. I hadn’t realized she was concerned that I thought she should let her work go on Dreams and concentrate instead upon our private material, but I was quickly able to convince her that I didn’t feel that way.)