“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(“There is a power of growth and value fulfillment within each individual that must be satisfied. It is the power that makes physical growth possible, the power that is behind the fetus. You know ahead of time the nature of the period into which you will be born. You [Jane and Rob, or Ruburt and Joseph] were both born with certain abilities, and you knew ahead of time that you would have to enlarge the framework of conventional concepts if you were to have room to use those abilities. In a way, they gave you both a second life, for in the old framework there was no satisfying [underlined] or creative way to go.

(Those two excerpts from Seth contain inspired thinking — especially portions about the power of value fulfillment, and the joy and spontaneity involved in creativity. As I typed his material I was reminded of the notes I wrote and played with the other day:

(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

(“Yes,” I said to Seth over my shoulder. In a recent session Seth had remarked that Billy was “a sweet creature.” And he is. I put him in the cellar, where he sleeps each night.)

I have thus far stayed clear of many important and vital subjects, involving mass realities, because first of all the importance of the individual was to be stressed, and his power to form his private events. Only when the private nature of reality was emphasized sufficiently would I be ready to show how the magnification of individual reality combines and enlarges to form vast mass reactions — such as, say, the initiation of an obviously new historical and cultural period; the rise or overthrow of governments; the birth of a new religion that sweeps all others before it; mass conversions; mass murders in the form of wars; the sudden sweep of deadly epidemics; the scourge of earthquakes, floods, or other disasters; the inexplicable appearance of periods of great art or architecture or technology.

(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.

(“My mind works in sneaky little ways,” she said. “I don’t tell you everything. I was thinking of something like a question-and-answer format for a book, if we did a new one.” Even that idea was a revelation to me, since she hadn’t mentioned a book, period. Seth returned briefly as we talked:

(“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?

(11:57. The telephone began to ring. The sudden noise was a shock, so deep was our mutual concentration. Yet Jane didn’t come out of trance. As Seth, she stared at me; I stared back, making no effort to take the call. Fortunately, the ringing soon stopped.)

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.

As for myself, I took both preventative “treatments” before Jane began speaking for Seth in 1963. One led to a strong serum reaction that incapacitated me for two weeks; the other resulted in a partial paralysis lasting several days. I accepted the vaccines because I yielded (if somewhat reluctantly) to conventional parental and medical pressures, as well as my own beliefs of the time: I was “supposed” to take the inoculations; they would be “good” for me. Even now I must carry a warning card in my wallet. It bears a description of my reactions to at least some vaccines, as well as the most emphatic statement that if I’m found unconscious for any reason — after an accident, say — I must not be given an injection of any kind because I might have a fatal reaction to it. I haven’t had a “shot” since living through those very unpleasant experiences, nor do I intend to. I no longer believe I’d succumb to one of the forbidden vaccines — but at the same time I don’t want to find out what might happen, either!

He’s commented before in his books on our medical practices and technology, of course. In Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality, for instance, see Session 703, which was held on June 12, 1974. At 10:36, in part: “People will die when they are ready to, following inner dictates and dynamics. A person ready to die will, despite any medication. A person who wants to live will seize upon the tiniest hope, and respond. The dynamics of health have nothing to do with inoculations. They reside in the consciousness of each being.”