“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(In Note 1 for the 817th session, which was held on January 30, I wrote that Sue Watkins had recently delivered the last of the typed manuscript for Seth’s The Nature of the Psyche. Actually, she had converted my original typed sessions making up Psyche into standard manuscript form for the publisher; I still have to do many of the notes for the book after I finish my work on Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality several months from now.

(On the other hand, with the copyedited manuscript for James and the concluding chapters of Emir mailed to Prentice-Hall earlier this month, Jane found herself with some unexpected free time. [We don’t expect to receive the page proofs for James, for correcting, until late next month.] Jane began to enjoy her break by writing poetry and doing some painting — but she surprised me when she also spontaneously began to rough out some of the notes for Psyche. She still planned to leave up to me the detailed, even painstaking work that she doesn’t care for: the endless checking and rechecking of dates and events in order to get each note just right. Yet I was more than happy with whatever help she could give, I told her, since it would let us get Psyche published that much sooner after Volume 2.

(I don’t know how long I’ll continue to benefit from Jane’s assistance, though, since poetry, painting, and notes can all be quickly laid aside if she starts a new project, or resumes work on one that she’s kept in abeyance for some time. One such delayed endeavor is an autobiography that she began several years ago. Another is the sequel to her novel, The Education of Oversoul Seven; that first Seven book was published in April 1973 — and lately she’s been thinking of resuming work on Seven Two, as we usually call it.¹ One thing is certain: Jane will see to it that something creative happens to change the status quo, for she’s much too restless and energetic to leave things as they are.

(In line with doing things differently, no session was held last Saturday night because over the weekend we decided to give up the Monday–Saturday session routine we’ve followed for the last eight months, and return to our original practice of holding sessions on Monday and Wednesday evenings. The change was made to give Jane more time on weekends to handle the mail. I don’t think my own daily work patterns will be affected much; I help her with the correspondence, but don’t spend nearly the time at it that she does.)

Growing from an infant to a full adult was probably one of the most difficult, and yet the most easy of feats that you will ever accomplish in a life. As a child you identified with your own nature. You intuitively realized that your being was immersed in and a part of the process of growth.

In various ways your religions have always implied your relationship with nature’s source, even though they often divorced nature herself from any place of prime importance. For religions have often hinged themselves upon one or another quite valid perception, but then distorted it, excluding anything else that did not seem to fit. “You are children of the universe.” This is an often-heard sentence — and yet the main point of the Christ story² was not Christ’s death but his birth, and the often-stated proposition that each person was indeed “a child of the father.”

There are many later-appended references in the Bible, such as the fig tree story, in which nature is played down. Christ’s “father” was, however, the God who was indeed aware of every sparrow that fell, who knew of every creature’s existence, whatever its species or kind. The story of the shepherds and flocks comes much closer to Christ’s intent, where each creature looked out for the others.

The majority of my readers have come down with one or another disease usually considered very dangerous, and without ever knowing it, because the body healed itself normally and naturally. The disease was not labeled. It was not given recognition as a condition. Worries or fears were not aroused, yet the disease came and vanished.

2. I underlined the word story (like this) in Seth’s material just to remind the reader that the Christ figure symbolizes our idea of God and his relationships. According to Seth, the man we call Jesus Christ was actually composed of three individuals who were the physical manifestations of the same nonphysical entity: John the Baptist, St. Paul, and a man historically known as Christ. None of these were crucified. Their roles became blended and distorted in history. Seth discussed the Christ story in various passages in The Seth Material and Seth Speaks, and has at least touched upon it in all of his succeeding books.