“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.

When Seth began this manuscript, I was personally working with the idea of “heroic impulses” (those separate from our usual ones) that would operate as inner impetuses toward constructive action. In this book, though, Seth states that it is our normal everyday impulses that we must learn to trust. Even I was taken back! Our usual impulses? The ones I ignored while I was looking for the “heroic” ones? And finally I began to understand: Our normal impulses are heroic, despite our misunderstanding of them. In a way, this entire book is an introduction to our impulses, those we follow and those we deny.

I’ve had my own hassles with impulses, following only those I thought would lead me where I wanted to go, and drastically cutting down those I feared might distract me from my work. Like many other people, I thought that following my impulses was the least dependable way of achieving any goal — unless I was writing, when impulses of a “creative” kind were most acceptable. I didn’t realize that all impulses were creative. As a result of such beliefs, I’ve had a most annoying arthritis-like condition for some years that was, among other things, the result of cutting down impulses toward physical motion.

Talk about psychological complexities! I was just presented with an excellent example of the ideas I’ve been discussing. As I wrote the previous few paragraphs of this Introduction, the words themselves seemed to carry me on with a certain rhythm. I felt as if I were drawing on energy and knowledge beyond my usual capacities. Then, since it was late afternoon, I took a break for a brief nap. More ideas came to me that I scribbled down in the bedroom. The subjective pace quickened and kept accelerating — then I hit a psychological brick wall, and I could carry the concept no further. At that point I suddenly recognized Seth “around the edges” of my mind. The next moment, I fell asleep. When I awakened half an hour later, I prepared dinner. Rob and I ate and watched the television news. Then I went back to my study.

No sooner did I sit down than such a rich vein of material opened that I could hardly write fast enough to get it all down; and it began where my earlier ideas had ended off. I was being given many of the subject headings for — Seth’s next book, even as I was writing the Introduction for this one! Behind each heading or subject, I sensed realms of information available to Seth, but not (in usual terms) to me. Yet there had been an earlier moment just before the onrush of material when I sensed an odd psychological threshold, a certain accelerated state, that in this case at least signaled the intersection of Seth’s thoughts and mine. Then there was a brief point of psychological rest, an almost neutral psychological platform in which Seth’s outline began to emerge.

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.