“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(“That isn’t nearly as conceited a statement as it seems to be, of course, for each thing each person does is also unique in the world. Yet, at the same time I mean that the sessions are truly original and significant, with their contents offering new creative insights and hope to the human species in a way that most endeavors do not do. In that sense the Seth business is a remarkable achievement on Jane’s part. I do believe that prolonged study of the Seth material would yield great results toward our understanding of ourselves….”

(It wasn’t until I was checking the page [or printer’s] proofs for Volume 1 last week that I realized Seth hadn’t followed through on his promise. I’d also forgotten to remind him to do so. I asked Jane if Seth could devote the next session to that subject matter so that I could insert it in Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality as a note or an appendix, since I had plenty of work to do yet for that second volume. She agreed; we thought some very interesting material would result. We also thought it was a good time to pose questions for Seth — for just two weeks ago, in the 800th session, he’d finished dictating his own fifth book, The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression.²

(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.

(“But I’m really surprised. I had no idea of this tonight,” Jane said as soon as she was Jane again — thereupon emphasizing anew some of our endless questions about the Seth phenomenon: What portion of her personality, or entity, whether that portion might be called a Seth, or whatever, had been busy planning — organizing — this new endeavor? And how could such a creative process take place without her having at least some conscious intimations of it? What were the limits of human accomplishment?

The desire for life has been most flaunted, yet human psychology has seldom dealt with the quite active desire for death. In its natural form this is not a morbid, frightened, neurotic, or cowardly attempt to escape life, but a definite, positive, “healthy” acceleration of the desire for survival, in which the individual strongly wants to leave physical life as once the child wanted to leave the parent’s home.

1. In the order of their publication the five previous Seth books are: Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul; The Nature of Personal Reality: A Seth Book; Volumes 1 and 2 of the “Unknown” Reality: A Seth Book; and The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression. All of Jane’s books, whether produced with or without Seth, are listed in the frontmatter of Mass Events, with publication dates.

Beginning in June 1974, then, while writing notes and appendixes for Volume 1 of “Unknown”, and taking Seth’s dictation for Volume 2, I spent eight months producing the art work for Jane’s Adventures in Consciousness and for her book of poetry, Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time; I finished all of those drawings in January 1975. In the meantime Jane completed Adventures in August 1974, and started Psychic Politics that October. In March 1975 we took time out to move from the apartment house in downtown Elmira to our “hill house” just outside the city. Jane finished dictating Volume 2 of “Unknown” for Seth in April 1975, and I started my notes and appendixes for it. In July 1975 Seth began The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression, and in December of that year Jane initiated work on her own The World View of Paul Cézanne: A Psychic Interpretation. She finished Politics in February 1976, and Cézanne in September; Politics was published that September also. I completed my own writing for Volume 1 of “Unknown” in October. Our 16-year-old cat, Willy, died early in November, and two days later we obtained a kitten, Willy Two (or Billy, as we soon came to call him), from an area humane society. I finished typing the manuscript for Volume 1 late in November, spent December checking it, and mailed it to Prentice-Hall early in January 1977.