“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I’ll preface the workaday notes for the first session of Mass Events with the following comments, just to briefly summarize the lifetime endeavor that my wife, Jane Roberts, and I are involved in with the Seth books. Seth is a highly creative “energy personality essence,” as he calls himself, who speaks through Jane while she’s in a trance or dissociated state. These notes, then, are written shortly after Seth finished dictating Mass Events in August 1979. I’ve discussed some of the same points while introducing earlier books in the series, of course, although on each occasion I did so in a different way for variety’s sake. At the same time, Jane and I want each book to be complete in itself, so that the “new” reader can begin to understand what’s happening from the very beginning. Details about some of the subjects I’ll mention here can emerge as this book proceeds, or others are referred to. And these notes will also free Jane to deal with other matters in her Introduction for Mass Events.

(Yet even producing the Seth books — along with a great amount of unpublished Seth material — doesn’t call upon all of Jane’s abilities, for she’s also written 10 books “on her own.” These include works of poetry, fiction, and psychic matters as experienced from her own conscious viewpoint. She has several more books in progress. It’s safe to note, however, that now all of her work bears upon that unique, still-growing view of consciousness expressed by Seth and herself. And so does mine.

(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.

If I catch anything amiss in Seth’s delivery I’ll ask him about it. He may omit a word, or I may misinterpret what he says while I’m concentrating on my notetaking. In these cases Jane always spots the error at once when she reads my typed session transcript. But except for such minor alterations, or in the case of personal information, which we may delete, Seth’s material is presented as received, and we never arbitrarily eliminate any of it — occasionally to the pain of others, I’m afraid. We think it important that these sessions be given just as Jane delivers them, for after all the manner of that presentation, and its organization, are vital parts of the whole Seth phenomenon. So is the speed of delivery, for that matter. I want to remind the reader that the Seth books are spoken books rather than written ones, and that ordinarily Seth has no chance to revise his copy.