“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Jane began dictating Seth Speaks in January 1970. In March, Tam signed her to a contract for Seth, Dreams … on behalf of Prentice-Hall. The Seth Material was published. Jane was on a creative roll. She kept changing and adding to the portions of Seth, Dreams … that she hadn’t used in The Seth Material, while at the same time her new work kept crowding it out. Finally, in 1971 Tam converted her contract for Seth, Dreams … into one for Seth Speaks. Jane didn’t keep on trying to sell Seth, Dreams … Neither did I, and somehow that perfectly good book ended up packed away. Tam left Prentice-Hall for other employment in 1982; he became my agent after Jane’s death in 1984. When at his request I rediscovered Seth, Dreams … three months ago, and examined it, I couldn’t believe that that finished manuscript had never been published. I’m most pleased that Jim Young accepted it at once for Stillpoint Publishing — just as I know Jane is!

Many people know of Jane’s death by now, and this makes it impossible for me to deal with that event in chronological order within her books. By rights, I shouldn’t be mentioning it sequentially until I publish the two books that Jane and I had finished while she was hospitalized — then it would be all right to announce that she is dead! But for convenience’s sake, in Seth, Dreams … I bring together certain events in chronological time; I feel that its having been written some time ago makes this book the ideal place for me to discuss Jane’s death, to unite the “past,” the “present,” and the “future’; I regard it as being next in line after Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment, which Prentice-Hall, Inc. is publishing in two volumes in the spring and fall of 1986. In Dreams, “Evolution, “… I stuck to Jane’s production of the Seth Material for that work, plus a strict chronological account of our personal lives while she delivered it. I made no leaps in time to write about her physical death, for to me that sad event lay too far in the future — over two and a half years — from the time she finished dictating Dreams, “Evolution,” … in February 1982.

How Seth, Dreams … eventually came to be issued by Stillpoint Publishing, how it can even be thought of as a “lost manuscript,” makes a most interesting account that I’ll just outline here. First, though, I remind the reader that Jane spoke in a trance or dissociated state for a discarnate personality who calls himself Seth; by his own definition he’s an “energy personality essence,” no longer focused within physical reality. Last July my agent, Tam Mossman, phoned to ask that I search Jane’s papers for a manuscript he remembers her submitting to him some seventeen years ago, when he had been a young editor just beginning a career with Prentice-Hall. That manuscript is Seth, Dreams and Projection of Consciousness. As soon as he’d reviewed it back then, Tam had asked Jane to do a book on Seth himself. The result? The Seth Material, for which Jane signed a contract in December 1968. The book came out in 1970; and in it she had used certain portions of Seth, Dreams …

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.

The life of any given individual could be legitimately compared to the dream of an entity. [...] The entity is concerned with them in the same way that you are concerned with your dreams. As you give inner purpose and organization to your dreams, and as you obtain insight and satisfaction from them, though they involve only a portion of your life, so the entity to some extent directs and gives purpose and organization to his personalities. [...]

Your own dreams are fragments, even as you are fragments of your entity. An unrecognized unity and organization lies within all of your dreams, beneath their diversity. And your dreams, while part of you, also exist apart.

Still, I didn’t know what to make of the material Seth gave us on dreams and the personality that night. [...] We were to discover that the dream universe was far more valid than we had ever supposed, but what Seth said then sounded like nothing we had ever read or heard before.

In a dream, I have said, you can experience many days while no corresponding amount of physical time passes. [...] To go into this further, many have said that life was a dream. [...]

He says, ‘I breathe, but who breathes, since consciously I cannot tell myself to breathe or not to breathe?’ He says, ‘I dream. But who dreams? I cannot tell myself to dream or not to dream.’ He cuts himself in half and then wonders why he is not whole. [...]

If man does not know who breathes within him, and if man does not know who dreams within him, it is not because there is one self who acts in the physical universe and another who dreams and breathes. It is because he has buried the part of himself which breathes and dreams. [...]

Time to your dreaming self is much like ‘time’ to your waking inner self. The time concept in dreams may seem far different than your conception of time in the waking state when you have your eyes on the clock and are concerned with getting to some destination by, say, 12:15. [...] Then, I am sure, you will see the similarity between this alone sort of inner psychological time, experienced often in waking hours, and the sense of time experienced often in a dream. [...]

The part of you who dreams is the ‘I’ as much as the part of you who operates in any other manner. The part of you who dreams is the part of you who breathes. [...]

[...] When Ruburt learned about the projected operations, he leapt to the conclusion that this was the meaning of the dream. [...] Part of the subconscious fantasy in the dream was valid, representing a watered-down version of the actual communication — for example, Miss Cunningham’s dark apparel.

[...] There in front of me was the lobby I had seen in my July dream — complete with the glassed-in gift area. [...]

[...] As I stood there, suddenly I “heard” Seth tell me, mentally, that my dream had forseen her condition which would lead to her death.

[...] Immediately he began to discuss Miss Cunningham, and my dream.

Because of the Miss Cunningham dream and the “Idea Construction” experience, Rob suggested that I try some experiments in ESP and expansion of consciousness and do a book on the results — negative or positive. [...]

[...] This tie-in immediately reminded me of the July dream, of course.

[...] (Or, someone might say, like dreaming vividly while awake.) But, for me, then, it was simply a completely new state of consciousness and awareness, a psychological experience like none I’d known before.

In dreaming, such a dissociated state as Ruburt reached is, of course, the rule, only the ability is used to form dream images. But these dream images work for the entity as a whole and serve as a means for the various personalities to communicate; that is, in many cases, the previous personalities communicate with the present one. [...]

Now, there are various types of dreams and dream fragments. [...]

[...] The material is included because of its importance in understanding the later concepts on dream reality and the methods of perceiving inner data.

[...] Now, in dreams you may have the feeling of experiencing many hours or even days. [...] If, in a dream, you experience a period of three days, physically you do not age for these days. [...]

Psychological time is so a part of inner reality that even though the inner self is still connected to the body, you are, in the dream framework, free of some very important physical effects. Now, as dreams seem to involve you in duration that is independent of clock time, so can you achieve the actual experience of duration as far as your inner visions are concerned.

It was invented by the ego to protect the ego, because of the mistaken conception of dual existence; that is, because man felt that a predictable, conscious self did the thinking and manipulating, and an unpredictable self did the breathing and dreaming. [...]

[...] As you can experience days or hours within its framework in the dream state and not age for the comparable amount of physical time, so as you develop, you will be able to rest and be refreshed within psychological time even when you are awake. [...]

The trees in the forest
Stand secret and silent,
Their voices suspended
In lungs of leaves
That only can whisper
Of dreams held dormant,
That breathe only once
In a thousand years.