“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.

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.

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.

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.”

At this time, I’m still working on the notes and appendixes for Volume 2 of “Unknown,” even while Seth has begun Mass Events. Jane and I have already planned our approach to Psyche (which Seth has just finished), and it’s to be published shortly after Volume 2 is. To top off our activities of the moment, we’re having the front porch of the hill house rebuilt — with a new raised floor and screening all around, so that Jane can write there in the summertime. The workmen swarming around all day, and the noise involved, are both exciting and distracting. But I have a feeling that the front porch affair isn’t the end of our construction odyssey: Jane has a certain speculative look when she notes that we have but one car — she doesn’t drive — to occupy the large two-car garage attached to the rear of the house. What better idea than to convert half of the garage into a writing room, with sliding glass doors, and add a screened-in porch there also? After all, she commented recently, the porch would protect our back door, too, especially from all of that winter weather….