“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The session was witnessed by writer Richard Bach and his editor, Eleanor Friede. They flew into Elmira yesterday after poor weather had delayed their scheduled arrival on Tuesday in time for ESP class. Dick had also visited us in late August, when Seth had Chapter One of this book under way.

Now: I will stop at that for now, and take a break. We will be finished with this chapter shortly, and then we will begin the next. (To Eleanor and Dick:) I would speak faster for you, but we need the notes for the book.

(10:46. Jane’s trance had been good. We were pleased that others had been present during some book dictation. The rest of the session was given over to our guests; Seth’s manner became more jovial and his pace speeded up considerably. End at about 12:30 a.m.

(Some notes added later: Dick Bach felt that he didn’t really write Seagull himself. By now the story of that book’s conception is well known: Late one night in 1959, Dick was walking beside a canal near a West Coast beach when he heard a voice say, “Jonathan Livingston Seagull.” No one else was around. He was astonished. He was even more so when, on his return home, the voice initiated images that gave him the bulk of the book in three-dimensional form. Then it stopped. On his own Dick tried unsuccessfully to finish the manuscript. Nothing happened until one day eight years later, when he suddenly wakened to hear the voice again — and with it came the rest of the book.

(Who wrote it? Dick didn’t claim authorship. He came across The Seth Material, saw similarities in Jane’s and his experiences, and came here to see if she or Seth could explain the phenomenon. There are points of correlation, of course, only Jane is presented not with just a voice but with an entire personality, Seth, who then writes books while she is in an altered state of consciousness. So she and Dick were highly interested in what Seth would say.

(“So other things were also involved — not only the birth of a book, but the emergence of the inner self, through art, into the physical universe. Now part of the focus and the strength comes from those two births, and the intensity behind them is also the reason why the book’s nativity strikes the world as strongly as it does. The two are merged in the book. You are looking for the author of Seagull, and I tell you I am looking at him. He may not have the face that you see when you look in the mirror, simply because you cannot see your true identity in a mirror. But I am looking at all that is visible of the author of Seagull, and you should know him best of all. And I will tell you through the years how to become acquainted with him, and more on speaking terms.

(Note that Seth endorsed Jane’s theory of Aspects. She’s begun a book on the subject. In it she will explore — among other things — the nature, validity, and sources of such personalities as Seth, and the “intrusion” of intuitional or revelatory material. Once again, see her Introduction.)