“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I don’t care for the term “channeling,” since I think it too all-inclusive and already trite. However, I liked both Jim’s ideas of my doing the Preface for Jane’s book, and of publishing a photo of her. And Laurel Lee Davies, the young lady who’s now helping me carry on my publishing activities, at once intuitively picked out from my files the one right photograph of Jane to us for Seth, Dreams … Jane’s father, Delmer Roberts, took the snapshot when she was on vacation with him in Baja, California in 1951. She was twenty-two years old. Jane and I didn’t meet until 1954. That little picture, then, was taken some twelve years before she began “coming through” with the Seth material. Yet, I find in it all of the ingredients that made up the Jane I knew — her great beauty, personality and creativity, her love of manipulating within her physical environment; I see her “steering herself” toward extraordinary accomplishments.

My own imperfect recollection following Tam’s request that I look for it was that Seth, Dreams … was an unfinished collection of records, ideas, and chapters that Jane had struggled with for several years, without selling it. Instead, what I found in a box in the basement was, to my amazement, a completed manuscript — a full book ready to go, one as fresh as it had ever been, and my wife had struggled with it. What emerged as Laurel Davies and I searched Jane’s and my records, including early Seth sessions, was a long story of our doubts and gropings in an area in which we had no guidance except for our own explorations. Seth, Dreams … was rejected by three major publishers while Jane worked on it during 1966-67. She was still an unknown in the field; by mid-1966 she’d had only one small psychic book, How to Develop Your ESP Power, published. Our subject of interest itself was largely denied validity by the social, psychological, and scientific establishments. We were still operating alone, then, even though Jane had been speaking for Seth for about three years. In spite of all of her questions, however, her strong creative vitality — her intuitive insistence upon using her most unusual abilities — kept her focusing ahead, and I helped her as much as I could. I’m still astonished when I think of what Jane was to accomplish in the next few years.

I began thinking about and working upon this Introduction for Seth, Dreams … late in October 1985. As I reread the book I learned that Jane devotes considerable portions of several chapters to material involving our friend, Sue Watkins — her adventures with dreams, projections, and probable realities — and also refers to her in other chapters. Sue published her two-volume work, Conversations With Seth, in 1980-81; her father died two years later. I’ve already referred to Laurel Lee Davies, the young lady who now works with me (and is helping especially with proofreading and answering mail). Ever since she arrived from the West Coast in August, Laurel had wanted to meet Sue, who lives in upstate New York. The three of us finally did meet — a few days after Sue’s mother had died on October 19. Two nights earlier, Sue had had a very strong precognitive dream concerning her mother’s death; she plans to discuss that event in the book she’s writing. Laurel made a card for Sue when we heard about the demise of her mother, and left room inside it for me to write a note. Here’s what I spontaneously produced.

There’s little I can say that will offer comfort to you about your mother’s death. On the other hand, I can say everything — for her life encompassed the world, the universe, just as much as yours does, or mine, or Laurel’s. She lives then, as I’m sure you know. From my own experience I can say that she’ll surely communicate with you, expressing new and unfathomable facets and attitudes of the universe — always brilliant, perhaps inexpressible in ordinary terms, yet reaching you and touching in unexpected ways. I think I know my own parents better now than I did when they were ‘living.’ I understand so much more about them now, and with compassion see and feel their strivings and hopes, loves and successes and failures in ways I was not consciously aware of before. I think this kind of heightened knowledge and awareness always comes to those still ‘living’ — but also, that those who have ‘died’ are more alive and adventurous than ever, and at least sometimes in ways we just cannot comprehend. I know this is the case with Jane. So, I think, it will be with you and your mother and father. My love to you and your son.