“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

Now—and I borrow the greeting of a certain energy personality essence: I can note some three and a half years later, shortly before Dreams goes to press, that copies of many items from our estate have been transferred to Yale University Library. These include the thousands of pages of the Seth material, regular and deleted [or private]; Jane’s and my own journals and other miscellaneous manuscripts, written records, and notes; ESP class tapes; some of Jane’s poetry and art, and some photographs of each of us. I have also sent to the library the originals of many thousands of letters from readers. And the transfer continues.)

For this note I’ll touch upon what I believe are some other characteristics of energy—the consciousnesses associated with warfare and nuclear energy, and the counterpart connections among those great states of being. Then I’ll refer to the concepts of perception theory and privation theory.

The ordinary violence involved with these events leads me to comment upon the theological concept of privation theory, and the military one of perception theory—for again, I think the two are closely related, not only to each other but to the points I’ve made in this note. In mundane terms, both represent longstanding distortions in perception of the great basic creativity of All That Is. I suggest that the reader review Seth’s material on the basically creative use of violence as I quoted it in Chapter 10; see Note 2 for Session 933.

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.

To me, privation theory and perception theory are interchangeable; they represent consciousnesses deeply exploring the misperceptions I’ve listed concerning violence, and the relationships involving the counterparts of nuclear energy and warfare.