“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane had started doing some typing on the final manuscript for Seth’s The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression a couple of days ago. She was also working on her own The Afterdeath Journal of an American Philosopher: The World View of William James. Yet I thought she needed the stimulus of Seth having something underway. There was more than a little irony in the situation, for I was the one who’d told her flat out, back in July 1975, that she was going to start Psyche, just so that she’d have a Seth book to play with. [I’d also wanted to see what she and Seth would come up with on demand.] But this time Seth fooled me and started Mass Events only a couple of weeks after finishing Psyche. I was all for it, though, I told Jane enthusiastically. It’s always a pleasure to work on a Seth book, to explore with him his unique view of reality, and to try to put at least a few of his ideas to use in our everyday, “practical” world. I repeated my thought that it didn’t matter how many Seth books she piled up ahead of contract, or publication: That was certainly a more creative and exciting position to be in than if one didn’t have anything ahead. Jane agreed, while still worrying about what we were going to do with all of the material as it accumulated year after year. At this time there’s no way we’re going to see it all published.

In January we obtained an unlisted telephone number, because we could no longer handle the 600-or-so calls a month that were coming in. Later in the month, Jane started writing James. In February 1977 we received from Prentice-Hall the copyedited manuscript for Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality. (Copyediting is one of the earlier editorial stages a book goes through on its way to publication, and is meant to study all of the work that Jane and I and her editor, Tam Mossman, have already done on the manuscript: Before it’s set into type, a reader who works independently of the publishing firm carefully checks the manuscript for grammar, contradictions, facts, consistency, and so forth, and makes suggestions for whatever changes he or she thinks are desirable. Jane and I are free, of course, to reject any alterations we don’t agree with.) In March we checked the copyedited manuscript for Cézanne. Seth finished dictating Psyche early in April. A few days later we began correcting page proofs for Volume 1 of “Unknown.”