“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

9:37 P.M. After she came out of trance, Jane and I simply stared at each other. Dreams was done at last! We felt sad, for several reasons. Even though Jane had remarked at the end of last Wednesday evenings session that Seth was close to the end of the book, his actual completion of it still hit us. I congratulated her; I told her that she had created another fine work which would help many people.

I can’t note the same for The Magical Approach to Reality: A Seth Book—the very promising work that Jane and I first discussed a year and a half ago [in August 1980], after Seth had started his group of excellent private sessions on that subject.⁸ I watched Jane try to write the book a number of times; last month, in Note 6 for Session 939 [in this chapter], I finally expressed the opinion that she wouldn’t finish the job. Or, to put it another way, Magical Approach has yet to undergo a resurrection by her! But obviously Jane has the freedom to engage in any project, and she chooses not to follow through with some of them. I think Magical Approach would have been a fine book as she planned it—but that it ended up squelched by at least two major factors: She was too inhibited by the subject matter [her physical symptoms] out of which the magical approach material had grown, and she was bothered because she had chosen to emulate the plodding way in which I put together the Seth books. That way didn’t allow her the creative freedom to spontaneously plunge ahead. As I wrote in Note 6 [for the 939th session], eventually I might try assembling such a work myself.

Even so, Jane had the magical approach in mind two days later, when she typed a rough last note for her journal on February 10: “Still annoying problems with fingers… hoping to clear this up, using in part robs new suggestion page [credo] for me. typing weth right hand. as I see it even that can be utilized in magical approach, again, Seth finished his book monday.”

What, then, are those “ideal developments” Jane and I are growing toward? Questions like that must intrigue Seth even more than they do us; his dealings with us—but especially with Jane, of course—are as much learning experiences for him as they are for us. After all, here he is, engaged in a “lifelong” process with my wife, and just as dependent upon what he can get through her psyche, as she is upon what she can get from him and then let through to me and to others! What storms of consciousness, as well as peaceful reaches, must Seth travel through in order to help her even as much as he does’? As far as he’s concerned those storms and reaches aren’t physical, but instead consist of intensities of feeling—as they do for us too, basically.

According to Seth, and Jane’s and my own experiences, each individual is a member of a group of “counterparts”—each is psychically connected to other men and women alive on earth now, in various countries, who are exploring related lifetime themes in ways that no individual could ever do. Counterparts may or may not meet, yet all share intuitive connections. Although Seth hasn’t gone into the idea yet, I believe that events have counterparts also, just as does any “living” organism, whether human or not. The counterpart notion is Seth’s timeless version of his concept of consecutive incarnations. (And yes, I think that events have reincarnational histories also, but in this note I’m confining myself to the counterpart thesis.)

Privation theory has for many centuries been a main tenet of theology: Evil is not a power in itself, but only the absence of good; it is not-good. Room is made for the existence of the devil, who rebelled against the God who created him and constantly inveighs others to follow him in choosing the not-good. I believe that the only devils we know are those we originate ourselves. Through privation theory religion has created unanswerable questions for itself as it seeks to explain man’s inhumanity to man. To me, privation theory is a beautiful example of how man projects his fears of the world he’s created out upon that very world. His focus is much too limited.

I don’t mean at all to put down everything we’ve created in our world, and to proclaim that Seth’s concept of All That Is is the magical solution that mankind has been searching for throughout his existence. I do mean to relate the self-created elements of our interior and exterior, individual and mass worlds to a larger whole of consciousness. It’s inevitable that we’ll grow. How we’ll grow is the question!

5. Jane has worked with Tam ever since he encouraged her to write The Seth Material 13 years ago; that book was published a year later, in 1970. One of Tam’s many generous acts was his initiating our contact with officials at Yale University Library just over three years ago. As a result, Jane and I have arranged that upon our deaths our estate—including the Seth material—goes to the Manuscripts and Archives division of the Library. My plan in the meantime has been to transfer copies of as much of our work as possible to Manuscripts and Archives, so that the material can be indexed and made available to researchers and to the public. I have yet to begin the work of copying, however, although I hope to start it soon now that I can see an end to my involvement with Dreams. In Chapter 2 of Dreams, in Volume 1, see Note 1 for Session 887, which Jane delivered in December 1979.