“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Regardless of whether the events at Three Mile Island have resulted in any significant radioactive fallout so far, they have generated some disquieting fallout as far as Jane and I are personally concerned. I’ll describe the latest of the many courses of action we’ve found ourselves considering over the years as we work with the Seth material, while trying to keep a balance between the realities we’ve created for ourselves and the possibilities we constantly encounter in the “outside” world.

(I didn’t get carried away by the idea this evening, but I was certainly taken with it as we talked. Yet I could see that I confused Jane, for to make such a venture possible we’d have to change certain beliefs and values that are deeply rooted within us; especially those about personal privacy and our reluctance to “go public” with such topical, immediate material, instead of trusting that the Seth material will exert a meaningful influence in society over the long run. Also involved would be the instant criticisms we’d encounter. But I think the main portion of my enthusiasm stemmed from the frustration I often feel because much of Seth’s material will go unpublished at this time. This year alone, for instance, he’s already given a good amount of excellent information upon a number of nonbook topics — among them the interpretation of dreams; human, animal, and plant consciousness, and the interactions among them; human sexuality; viruses and inoculation; other realities he himself inhabits, and so forth. We’re sorry to think that such material will be shelved indefinitely, but there’s no room for most of it in Mass Events, and there probably won’t be in future books either. I do try to give hints and clues to some of it in this book, though, as I’ve done recently in sessions 841 and 844–45.

(At the same time, I told Jane tonight, I wasn’t asking that she try for a fast book because I didn’t think she was ready for it, even though I knew that she — and Seth — could do it. “I wish I had your confidence in me,” she remarked at one point. “What would happen to Mass Events in the meantime?”

(I sought to reassure her, but later when I went into her study to ask about something else, I found her looking quite distressed as she sat at her typewriter. My words had had more of an impact than I’d intended. I apologized. But Jane had written some chapter headings, which were very good, and half a page of commentary for Seth’s hypothetical book. Once again I insisted that I wasn’t suggesting she try for the project. Jane believed me, finally, and in the course of the conversation I learned that she’s also been worrying about which of Seth’s recent sessions should be presented in Mass Events. She agreed with the decisions I’d made in that area, but she also wanted Seth “to get back to the book per se, and call his sessions dictation.

The Jonestown and Harrisburg incidents are indeed classic examples of the meeting places between private and public realities. I intend to deal with them in depth in The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, where the background, particularly for Frameworks 1 and 2, has already been established.

(Pause.) The Jonestown disaster happened (in November 1978) long after we began this book (in April 1977). Just lately another event occurred — a breakdown and near disaster at a nuclear plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Now in my other books I have rarely commented upon public events of any nature. This manuscript, however, is devoted to the interplay that occurs between individual and mass experience, and so we must deal with your national dreams and fears, and their materializations in private and public life.

The Harrisburg situation potentially threatened the lives of many thousands, and in that circle of events the characteristics of a cult are less easy to discern. Yet they are present. You have scientific cults as well as religious ones.