“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(“I’ll tell you one thing,” she said as we sat for tonight’s session, “I don’t have an idea in my head…. I’m just waiting. Come on, Seth….” Nevertheless, we knew that Seth would soon finish Mass Events; he’s been very neatly summing it up in recent sessions.

(10:36 P.M. And on that gentle note Seth brought Mass Events to a close. To the end he stayed with his practice of giving book dictation on Wednesday evenings. Jane and I had expected him to finish his work soon, yet when the moment arrived we still felt a certain surprise, a certain nostalgic letdown: Something we’d counted upon as part of our weekly routine wouldn’t be there any more.

(“Okay,” I said, teasing her. “You’d better hurry up, though, ’cause he’s already got his next one planned. On dreams, evolution, and value fulfillment — remember? But I should be careful,” I added. “You and your boy might start in on it too soon, and then the joke would be on me.” Somewhat ruefully, I considered all of the work I still had to do to prepare the manuscript of Mass Events for publication.

(Actually, both of us will continue to be as busy as ever. Jane plans to write an introduction for Mass Events next month, as summer draws to a close. In the meantime she’s occupied with her own latest book, The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto, which she started last May under the Heroics title [see the opening notes for the 854th session]. She’s written the first drafts for many of the chapters of the book by now, and has planned most of the rest of them — although she may change any of her work at any time. Now she reminded me that “a lot of God of Jane is written as my own response to stuff Seth gives in Mass Events.” Jane’s editor, Tam Mossman, hasn’t seen any of her new book yet, although he’s well acquainted with it through a series of lengthy telephone exchanges. Jane thinks she may sign the contracts for it later this year — before Christmas, that is. And her third Seven novel, Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time, waits for her to return to work on it.

(While I’m doing my own work on Mass Events we’ll hold the sessions for Seth’s Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment, of course. My own long-range goal in working with the Seth books is one that I’ve found very difficult to achieve: I want to catch up on the backlog of work involved with the books so that I can devote most of my efforts to whatever the current Seth book is — while Seth is still producing it. This would certainly be a luxury for me; in my notes for Mass Events I’ve shown how complicated affairs could get for Jane and me when I had to juggle several projects at once over long periods of time.

(I left my thoughts about Three Mile Island, and began to consider a closing statement about Seth finishing Mass Events as summer passed its zenith and prepared to blend into fall. Then I had it. Of course: The change of seasons meant that while I would be doing my own work on the book, the geese would be flying south. Already I looked forward to their migration, that ancient movement I’ve become especially fond of since we moved into the hill house over four years ago. Through the geese I want to associate Jane’s and my activities with nature rather than technology, for in nature I sense a great, sublime, ultimate peacefulness and creativity that far surpasses technology, can we but ever manage to approach an understanding of what nature really means for us physical creatures. To me, without getting into questions about the magnificent overall originality embodied in All That Is, nature is the basic physical environment which all “living” species jointly create and manipulate within. And my personal, symbolic way of trying to grasp a bit of nature’s ultimate mystery lies in my admiration for the twice-yearly flights of the geese.

(I can’t think of a better way to bring Mass Events to an end.)