“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane’s poem can also serve as a symbol to show that she hasn’t held a session for Mass Events for 42 weeks, or since giving the 830th session last March; indeed, the summer, fall, and winter of 1978 have passed, and we’re into the next year [and a very cold and stormy one it is, so far]. We accomplished many things during those nine and a half months, however, including the holding of 56 nonbook sessions. Those sessions, whether private or not, are of course more than double in number the 22 sessions Jane has given for Mass Events [not counting tonight’s]. In connection with our feelings about the long intervals that have materialized several times during the production of this book, see my opening notes for the 815th session — especially those concerning simultaneous time, and my statement that “We do not plan to ask Seth when the book will be done.” I’ll continue our chronology here, then, by describing many of our professional activities since last March, and follow it with Jane’s own account of at least some of the reasons for the long interruption in book work.

(Although each of us had looked over Mass Events occasionally, still it seemed strange to hear Seth come through with new material for it after all of that time had passed, and equally strange to resume work on these notes. I rechecked my opening notes for the last session: Yes, we did finish correcting the page proofs for James early in April 1978. Tam Mossman did visit later that month, and at his urging Jane did go back to work on Seven Two with her old enthusiasm.

(Then in May 1978 Sue Watkins began helping me by typing the final manuscript for the session notes for Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality. In June, with no hard feelings involved on anybody’s part, Jane withdrew Emir from consideration at Prentice-Hall when the decision was made there to publish the story in two volumes; on July 12, Eleanor Friede at Delacorte Press accepted Emir for publication as a single book. Later in July Sue finished typing the notes and started in on the appendixes for Volume 2, just as we received the first books for James. Jane completed Seven Two in August, and set to work preparing the manuscript for Tam. Late that month — unbelievably to me — I finished my own work on Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality, and immediately began to type the final draft of the sessions; as I finished groups of sessions I mailed them to Tam every few days, while at the same time collaborating with Jane on the table of contents for the book. On September 23 Sue delivered the completed appendix material for Volume 2, and I sent Tam each appendix, with its notes, as I checked it. Jane finished typing her manuscript for Seven Two on October 3, and I helped her correct that book for mailing on October 9. My own mailings for Volume 2 continued until the 21st of the month, when at last that very long project was completed and out of the house in its entirety for the first time. I felt like celebrating!

(Now another event took place in October 1978 that is most important to Jane and me: Sue Watkins received the go-ahead from Tam Mossman to write a book on the ESP classes that Jane had conducted for some seven and a half years, from the fall of 1967 to February 1975. It’s to be called Conversations With Seth. This is great news for the three of us, of course. It’s a project that Jane herself never figured she’d do, but wanted done — and Sue, who was a class member, is talented psychically herself, has a newspaper and reporting background, and is ideally qualified for the job.¹ (Conversations, we think, is sure to be published before Mass Events, since Tam is supposed to have Sue’s manuscript in hand by January 1980, for publication in the fall of that year. Even assuming that Seth will finish dictating Mass Events later this year [1979], Jane and I will still have too much work to do on it for publication in 1980.

(Resuming our chronology: On October 24, 1978, Jane worked out the Table of Contents for Seth’s Psyche, and started her Introduction for it on the 26th; we mailed Psyche to Tam in sections as we put the manuscript together, and finished with that endeavor on November 9. On November 14 Eleanor Friede visited us to renew an old friendship and to go over Emir with Jane. No sooner had she left than Tam arrived, two days later, bringing with him the copyedited manuscript² of Seven Two for us to check; on the 20th, our work completed on it, I sent it back to him at Prentice-Hall. We received the printer’s sample pages for Seven Two on December 4 [we see these for each book, and they show us just how the work will look when published]. On December 7 the copyedited manuscript for Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality came; it’s more than 900 pages long, and painstakingly checking every word on every page of that book kept us busy until Christmas Eve; I mailed it to Tam on December 26. Next, on January 13, 1979, the copyedited manuscript for Psyche arrived. Jane and I are still going over it.

(Since last March, then, we’ve been holding our private, or nonbook, sessions twice a week usually: Their regular production came to be a steady, reassuring flow of creativity in back of all of the other, often hectic activities I’ve listed here. Those 56 sessions are too numerous to quote in any meaningful way, and even difficult to briefly summarize. Jane did review them for me while I was working on this note, however, and here’s a slightly edited version of what she wrote as a result of her study:

(We held our first session for 1979 — a private one — on the evening of New Year’s Day. During it Seth remarked that he’d “begin book sessions again next Wednesday,” but that didn’t quite work out; he still had a few more nonbook sessions to go. Jane has been looking over his material on Mass Events every so often lately, though, with the idea of going back to work on it. And then, on the very night when she told me that she thought Seth would resume book dictation, Sue Watkins called with news that it was all official now: Today she’d signed her contract with Prentice-Hall for the publication of Conversations With Seth.)