“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.

(We usually hold two “sessions,” or meetings with Seth each week, totaling three or four hours, but we think that actually Seth could talk 24 hours a day for the rest of our lives, and still not cover all of the material he’s capable of tuning in to for us. [The only trouble is that Jane and I wouldn’t last long!] That astonishing creativity and energy in the sessions beckon us on constantly, then, regardless of what we think about Seth’s “reality or nonreality,” and even regardless of what he tells us about himself.

(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.

(“You have both used the material I have given you, and what you have learned on your own through the material, very well — some of it so smoothly that you are not even aware of your accomplishments. In some areas you still cling to old beliefs, but there is no end to what you can do, still, with growing comprehension. That is, you can still accomplish as much, if not more, than you already have.

(“Think of yourselves, in important ways, as almost having been born in 1963 [when these sessions began]. The two of you — for you are both involved — have not only initiated a new framework from which you and others can view the nature of reality more clearly, but you also had to start from scratch, so to speak, to get the material, learn to trust it, and then to apply it to your own lives — even while ‘the facts were not all in yet.’ At no point did you have all of the material to draw upon, as for example, your readers do at any given point. So tell Ruburt not to judge himself too harshly, and in all of this have him try to remember his sense of play….”

(“All creativity is basically joyful. It is play in the highest sense of the term, and it is always alive with motion. The sessions and our work can help bring about a new mental species of men and women. Ideas change the chromosomes, but the sessions and Ruburt’s books, and so forth, must first and foremost be joyful expressions of creativity, spontaneous expressions that fall into their own order…. You paint because you love to paint, and forget what an artist is supposed to be or not to be. Have Ruburt forget what a writer or a psychic is supposed to be or not to be. Ruburt’s spontaneity lets all of his creative abilities emerge. It is foolhardy to try and apply discipline, or secondary order to a spontaneous creativity that automatically gives you the finest order that nature could ever provide.”

(One might say that Mass Events had its origins two Seth books ago — way back in Volume I of “Unknown” Reality, which Seth finished dictating in June 1974. At 10:14 in the 697th session for that work, he made this statement: “I will have more to say concerning illnesses, epidemics, and mass disorders in this book.”

(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

All of the issues form together to make a trellis of behavior. Thorns or roses may grow therein. That is, the individual will grow outward toward the world, encountering and forming a practical experience, traveling outward from his center in almost vinelike fashion, forming from the fabric of physical reality a conglomeration of pleasant or aesthetic, and unpleasant or prickly events.

The question of epidemics, for example, cannot be answered from a biological standpoint alone. It involves great sweeping psychological attitudes on the part of many, and meets the needs and desires of those involved — needs which, in your terms, arise in a framework of religious, psychological and cultural realities that cannot be isolated from biological results.

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.

Give us a moment… Inner reality and private experience give birth to all mass events. Man cannot disentangle himself from the natural context of his physical life. His culture, his religion, his psychologies, and his psychological nature together form the context within which both private and mass events occur. (Loudly, then whispering so softly that I could barely hear:) This book will, then, be devoted to the nature of the great sweeping emotional, religious, or biological events that often seem to engulf the individual, or to lift him or her willy-nilly in their power.

What is the relationship between the individual and the gigantic mass motions of nature, of government, or even of religion? What about mass conversions? Mass hysteria? Mass healings, mass murder, and the individual? Those are the questions we will devote ourselves to in this book.

(Jane came out of her trance in a sort of amazed silence — which meant that she had some idea of what Seth had been talking about, as sometimes happens.

(“Now just who in the heck is up to what?” I asked her. We laughed. “How can I use this material as an appendix or note in ‘Unknown’ if it belongs in a new book? I thought you and your boy were up to something not long after the session started.”

(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.

(“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?

(“Well,” I told Jane as we went to bed, “right now my idea is that we’ll have only short notes and no appendixes. Doing things that way will speed up the publication date.” I’m all too conscious of the great amount of physical time I’m spending on the two volumes of “Unknown” Reality; I often feel responsible for holding up publication of Volume 2 especially, since Seth finished dictating it almost exactly two years ago. See the chronology of our activities in Note 2.)

1. In the order of their publication the five previous Seth books are: Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul; The Nature of Personal Reality: A Seth Book; Volumes 1 and 2 of the “Unknown” Reality: A Seth Book; and The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression. All of Jane’s books, whether produced with or without Seth, are listed in the frontmatter of Mass Events, with publication dates.

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.

Note that even though Seth finished dictating Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality almost three years ago (in June 1974), and I completed my own notes and appendixes for it six months ago, we’re just now coming to the end of the long, complicated process involved in following the manuscript through the editorial and production stages necessary to get the book out into the marketplace. Checking the page proofs is the last stage we go through before publication, and Volume 1 is due to be marketed this summer — probably in July.

In physical terms, three years is an important portion of one’s life span. What were Jane and I each doing all that time? We were involved in a whole group of endeavors. I’ll recap the major ones in order to place the beginning of Seth’s latest book, Mass Events, in context. I do this for my own sake as well as the reader’s, since I like to know exactly where I am in time, and what I mean and feel when writing even a short note for one of the Seth books.

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.

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….

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.

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.”

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.