“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

That vision reminds me of a letter of mine that has just appeared in Reality Change, a magazine its editor is devoting to the Seth Material, and publishing in Austin, Texas. At her request last September, I briefly described my feelings a year after Jane’s death. I mentioned how worthwhile it would be to throughly study the continuous global healing processes that I believe constitute one of the earth’s major forces, so that we could consciously use them to “help our species lead itself into new areas of thought and feeling.” Now I enlarge upon that idea by stating that such processes should be studied amid the earth’s even larger life-and-death cycles — those making up that “flickering gentle glow” my mythical observer would see from space. I think that eventually we’ll regard all life upon our planet — or upon any other — in such terms, that we’ll be led to do so by our own needs and creative curiosity. Beyond that will lie our exploring, as Jane did, the more basic nonphysical nature of reality.

It seems incredible to me that my wife, Jane Roberts, has been dead for more than thirteen months. It’s late October 1985 as I begin this Preface for her Seth, Dreams and Projection of Consciousness. As I have informed many correspondents, Jane died at 2:08 A.M. on Wednesday, September 5, 1984, after spending 504 consecutive days in a hospital in Elmira, N. Y. I was with her when she died. The immediate causes of her death were a combination of protein depletion, osteomyelitis, and soft-tissue infections. These conditions arose out of her long-standing rheumatoid arthritis. I’ll be discussing Jane’s illnesses — her “symptoms” — much more thoroughly in other work. Indeed, I plan to eventually write a full-length biography of her, and am doing research for that project now.

In more specific terms, I’m organizing this rather short exploration of Jane’s death around these items; a loose chronology surrounding her writing of Seth, Dreams … in 1966-67, and our unsuccessful attempts to sell the book; my acceptance of the survival of the personality after physical death; a waking experience involving my sensing Jane very soon after she had died; a metaphor I created for her death; a dream in which I not only contacted her but gave myself relevant information; another metaphor for Jane’s death; my speculations about communication among entities, whether they’re physical or nonphysical; a letter that could be from the discarnate Jane — one that was sent to me by its recipient, a caring correspondent whom I’ll call Valerie Wood; a note I wrote to Sue Watkins about the death of her mother; some quotations from a published letter of mine; Jane’s notes concerning the relationship we had; and, finally, the poem in which she refers to her nonphysical journeys to come.

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’ll just find myself somewhere.’ Nor could she describe how she got through to us. [...]

[...] “I guess I’ll ‘specialize’ with Seth. [...]

[...] “Hopefully, as Seth explains more about the inner senses, we’ll understand more about what’s actually going on and learn some methods that will help us.”

[...] As you’ll see, we were shortly to put his methods to work. [...]

Some night we’ll have a party. You can dispense with the notes or use a recorder, and we’ll have a good informal time of it.

[...] I can’t afford to give you any predictions at this time, for fear that you’ll distort them, and then it would seem that I was to blame.

[...] The session had quite a different effect on Rob, however, as you’ll see in the next chapter.

[...] “The Seth Material will be published, and you’ll help the world — it’s too much! [...]

[...] I’ll ask him to comment, if he doesn’t on his own.”

I’ll go along with your little joke about Malba Toast of the Midplane. [...]

[...] I’ll tell you, I’ll make out a statement to that effect.”

[...] Ruburt’s mind is much like my own, though if you’ll forgive me, in a very limited fashion. [...]

[...] As the personality on your plane actually changes, expands and grows to its potentialities, as it presents at various times varied images to the world (such as — if you’ll forgive me for using cliches — a smiling face, a sorrowful face), but is still basically the same personality, so on another level does the entity present at various times a varied appearance and speak in a different voice. [...]

[...] If you’ll forgive a pun, because a certain cause will usually give a certain effect in your physical universe, you may be justified in saying that the apparent results are laws that operate within your system. [...]

[...] I have said, if you’ll forgive the brief reminder, that these are composed of solidified vitality.

If you’ll forgive me, Joseph, I would like to repeat: Mental enzymes allow the solidified vitality to change form. [...]

[...] “He’ll think I was out of my mind instead of out of my body,” I said. [...]

“I’ll ask Seth,” Rob said, smiling. [...]