“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(That’s saying a lot, really. We do intend to spend the rest of our lives studying the ramifications of that “unique, still-growing view of consciousness.” We still have a host of questions about Seth’s reality, his concepts, and Jane’s role [and my own] in all of this — that is, questions about consciousness itself, basically: consciousness getting to know itself in endless variations, as I’ve written before, and whether or not it’s couched in physical form.

(At the same time, Jane and I are extremely grateful that we have the opportunity to study ideas about consciousness with Seth, and this opening up of our individual realities is something we couldn’t have conceived of before 1963. Our appreciation of life has expanded greatly — and if the Seth material did nothing but help us grow in that respect, it would perform a very valuable service. We hope others feel they’ve gained something from the material too. [Actually, I think that what I’ve learned has saved me from bitterness and disillusionment in later life. Jane has also been helped a great deal.] So our aim with the Seth books is to let Seth have his say, to add some thoughts of our own, and to trust that the feelings and meanings in all of this will evoke beneficial responses in each reader. It’s all we can do. I for one think that my own words are pretty inadequate tools of expression to convey the deeper, unspoken meanings within life that I sense but cannot really verbalize.

(I also think that Seth himself could have some pretty funny things to say here to Jane and me — some day I’ll ask him — words with which he’d humorously caution us not to take the whole affair too seriously, to leave room in our daily lives for the simple, uninhibited joy of creative expression and living even while we study his unending outpouring of material. But maintaining such a balance isn’t always easy. Seth has already offered Jane encouragement twice since he finished his part of the work for Mass Events in August 1979. He came through with the following quotations when Jane began to express a renewed concern about her responsibility for his material, and for the reactions of others to it. Her feelings had arisen in large part because of the ever-increasing mail response the Seth books have generated. Interesting, then, the way the Seth portion of Jane’s personality structure [whatever Seth’s reality may be] reinforces those other portions that are meeting all of the challenges embodied in her current mental and physical existence — and we are continually seeking to learn more about how Seth is able to do this. In these excerpts Seth also touches upon certain other points that we think of often.

(“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….”

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.”

In addition to these activities, Jane conducted her weekly ESP classes until we moved in March 1975, and kept up with her considerable correspondence. Her mail is accumulating at such a rate that I think it’s becoming a valuable social document in its own right. An extremely interesting study could be done on the personal and social factors behind the great variety of responses her work has generated. We have on file most of the letters we’ve received over the years.