“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane was quite upset before the session this evening, and I’m the one who was responsible for her state. Somehow, after supper, we got on the subject of Seth doing a “quick book” about Jonestown and Three Mile Island, something that could be offered to the public very soon, instead of material that would show up in a regular Seth book a couple of years from now. We already had the perfect title for the book, one we’d jokingly originated following last Monday night’s session: Seth on Jonestown and Three Mile Island: Religious and Scientific Cults.

(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the main portion of my enthusiasm stemmed from the frustration I often feel because much of Seth’s material will go unpublished at this time.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?”

(“Nothing,” I said. “It would just wait until the Jonestown–Three Mile Island thing was done. Maybe we’d have sessions almost every night for a few weeks, or whatever it took. Anyhow, we’d have to check to see whether our publisher is set up to market a book that quickly, or would even want to.”

In scientific terms there was no fallout involved in the disaster at Jonestown. Yet there was of course a psychological fallout, and effects that will be felt throughout the land by people in all walks of life. The Jonestown situation definitely involved all of the characteristics that I have ascribed as belonging to a cult. There was fanaticism, a closed mental environment, the rousing of hopes toward an ideal that seemed unachievable because of the concentration upon all of the barriers that seemed to stand in its way.

Most cults have their own specialized language of one kind of another — particular phrases used repetitiously — and this special language further serves to divorce the devotees from the rest of the world. This practice was also followed by those at Jonestown. Loyalty to friends and family was discouraged, and so those in Jonestown had left strong bonds of intimacy behind. They felt threatened by the world, which was painted by their beliefs so that it presented a picture of unmitigated evil and corruption. (Pause.) All of this should be fairly well recognized by now. The situation led to the deaths of hundreds.