“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Robert F. Butts, my husband, sits on the couch across from me, taking verbatim notes of what I say as Seth, transcribing these “other-worldly” communications with a modern pen on good white bond paper. When I held ESP classes, Seth’s sessions were always taped, and just this week he “came through” as I was being recorded for a radio program to be aired later. So technology, with all of its implications, is never really too far away.

While Seth was dictating The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, for example, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident occurred; and had the affair turned into a disaster, our Chemung County would have been used to house refugees. Many spectacular national events have happened, of course, since our first sessions took place late in 1963, but Seth seldom mentioned such issues, and then only in answer to our own questions. In this current book, however, he discusses in depth how our private realities merge into mass experience. For that reason he examines the public arena, and devotes a good deal of material to Three Mile Island and to the Jonestown mass suicides as well. Both situations occurred as Seth was dictating this book, and while they are contemporary, both cases are classic in their implications.

While Seth was dictating Mass Events, for example, another of our cats (Billy) died. Seth was discussing the Three Mile Island accident, but he left off book dictation for a while because we felt so badly, and gave us some excellent material on animal consciousness before and after death — because “tragedies” come in all shapes and sizes, and the most domestic events of our days offer Seth opportunities to comment on life itself.

So even if I was focused elsewhere and my consciousness turned inward, a spotlight was thrown upon our world from that other viewpoint, almost as if a character in one of our dreams suddenly came awake, walked out of the dream, and dared comment on our waking world. Perhaps this isn’t a good analogy — Seth is far from a dream character, and in fact I hardly ever dream of him at all — but he is a personality whose platform of reality isn’t the same as ours, a personality who writes books through me, but from his standpoint, not mine.

In this book he comments on our religions, sciences, cults, and on our medical beliefs as well, with an uncompromising wisdom — as if — as if he represents some deep part of the human psyche that knows better, that has always known better — as if he speaks out not only with my voice but for many many other people — as if he represents the truths that we have allowed ourselves to forget.

“You make your own reality.” That statement is one of the cornerstones of Seth’s material, stated almost from the beginning of our sessions and emphasized throughout his books. In Mass Events, though, Seth goes further, maintaining that our private impulses are meant to provide the impetus for the development of our own abilities in a way that will also contribute to the best interests of the species and the natural world as well. He’s speaking of our normal impulses here, those that we’ve been taught are dangerous, chaotic, and contradictory. Seth maintains that we can’t trust ourselves while distrusting our impulses at the same time. Much of this book is concerned with the purposes of our impulses, and the reasons for their poor reputations in the eyes of science and religion. What Seth is really saying here is that our impulses are meant to help us create our own realities on a personal basis in a way that will enhance both our private lives and our civilizations.

If so, though, such altered “between world” personalities can be remarkably stable; and if they form according to our ideas of individuality, they can certainly outdo us in their unique complexity. For if Seth is only a psychological model filled out by my unconscious trance material, then he certainly puts our usual concepts of personality to shame, and by implication shows that we ourselves have a long way to go if we are to use our full potential.

So I do think more is involved. I think that Seth is a model of ourselves as we know we can be; that he speaks for the part of ourselves that never for a minute believed all that nonsense about flawed selves.

But however we attempt to define Seth’s reality, I’m convinced of one thing by now: He is delivering to our conscious minds our deepest unconscious knowledge about ourselves, the world, the universe, and the source of Being Itself. Not that Seth claims any kind of omnipotence, because he doesn’t. His material, however, is clearly providing such translations of unconscious knowledge, and intuitive disclosures; disclosures, according to Seth, no more remarkable than those available in nature itself, but we have forgotten how to read nature’s messages; disclosures no more mysterious than those available in our own states of inspiration, but we’ve forgotten how to decipher those communications too. Instead, many people are even frightened of inspiration itself.

Following this, in our next session, Seth confirmed that the material amounted to a partial outline for his projected new book, and that the title I’d “picked up” while he was still finishing Mass Events was correct. So though he hasn’t begun it as of this writing, two days later, surely he will start dictating Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment any day now. My glasses will go off. Seth will say again, “Now: Dictation,” and Rob will make up a new title page for his notebook.

The Seth sessions and Seth’s books are inevitably connected to my relationship with Rob, of course. He’s far more than a recorder or transcriber of the material. Rob’s remarkable mind with its questions and probing nature has always stimulated me to do my best, and has served as a kind of invisible but sturdy psychological screen, helping me view myself and the sessions as clearly as possible. If it hadn’t been for his encouragement and active participation, I doubt that the Seth sessions would exist in their present form.