“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(By his own definition Seth is no longer a physical being, although he’s told us he’s lived a number of previous lives; thus, ideas of reincarnation enter into his material. Mass Events is the sixth¹ book that Seth has produced — all of them with Jane’s active cooperation, obviously, as well as my own, since I write down his material verbatim, then add my own notes. Often Jane has little memory of the information she delivers as, or for, Seth. She began speaking for him in December 1963, and shows no signs of slackening her output. At times her Seth voice can be very powerful indeed, with an accent I have yet to succeed in describing. When she’s really into her trance state, her blue-gray eyes become much darker, much more luminous and penetrating. Seth calls Jane “Ruburt” and me “Joseph.” According to him, these “entity names” mean only that in our present lives we identify more with the male aspects of our entities, or whole selves — which in themselves are neither male or female, but contain within them a number of other selves [of both sexes] to whom we’re related, or a part of, reincarnationally and otherwise.

That progression in Jane’s endeavors (and in my own to a lesser degree) may reflect her strong writing and psychic abilities, but it also reveals the way we constantly work with her work, and how we go about presenting it in the form of physical books so that we can show others what we’ve been up to.

This reconstruction of the past can be both fascinating and frustrating as I compare dates, session numbers, and our daily activities. Somehow, immersed in all of that minutiae of the past, I revive it so that it becomes part of the present once more — and that coexistence then reminds me of Seth’s idea of simultaneous time; perhaps, outside of dreaming, it’s the best approximation I can make of the paradoxical notion that all exists at once, and that all changes together, for each time I regard one of my past moments from the present, I change both that past and the present.

Another purpose is involved in presenting Mass Events in context, though: I plan to use current professional and personal events from our lives as a sort of background or framework for the book as Jane delivers it for Seth. But right now, here’s a chronological list of our activities from June 17, 1974, when Seth finished his share of the work on Volume I of “Unknown Reality” to April 18, 1977 (today) when I mailed the corrected page proofs for that volume to Jane’s publisher.

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.

5. Seth referred to evolution in both volumes of “Unknown” Reality. As it happens, I’ve just finished writing a rather long dissertation on the subject for Volume 2. It will be presented as Appendix 12.