“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

Without taking into account here the essences of other life forms, do I think the human personality survives physical death? Considering the loving, passionate “work” that Jane and I engaged in for more than twenty years, of course I do. No other answer makes intuitive or consciously reasonable sense to me. I think it quite psychologically and psychically limiting to believe otherwise, for such beliefs can only impede or postpone our further conscious understanding of the individual and mass realities — the overall “nature” — we’re creating. I think that all of us seek answers, and that our searches are expressed in our very lives.

My hospital adventure is still symbolic and literal to me in the most intimate of terms. It’s made me think often about the tremendous variety of reassurances the “dead” can choose to offer the “living.” A number of Jane’s readers have sent me communications they claim to have received for me from Jane in her after-death state. I’m making a collection of these for study. In the midst of my sorrowing for my wife, how did I — and how do I — know which of the communications are really from her? Or whether any portions of some of the messages may be? I soon learned that in each case I had to rely upon my own sensual and psychic equipment to intuitively know what to believe, or to be moved by, sometimes to the point of tears. Obviously, I can judge my feelings about what’s right and not right in my own experiences with a discarnate Jane much more easily than I can gauge the outside of someone else’s communication. But since I believe the Seth Material is valid, it would be very arrogant of me to think that none of Jane’s readers except me had legitimately tuned into her where she is now or perhaps touched upon her world view.

So if I insist that I’ve communicated with Jane at times, then I’m obligated to consider statements from others claiming the same thing. But in ordinary terms, even if my wife’s death has left me more open and vulnerable to psychic possibilities, I still shrink from offering any sort of blanket assurance. (“Yes, I’m convinced that you have reached Jane, just as I have.”) I’m not contradicting myself when I note that perhaps — and I’ve suspected for a long time that ultimately this is correct — it is true that on some far levels of consciousness and communication that we do not (or even cannot) understand at this “time,” each person who is so inclined to do so has at least touched a Jane who responded clearly enough. She will continue to do so. In this view, those elements in such messages that have no meaning for me can be only distortions on the part of the medium or the letter-writer or the poet. I do think that communication among entities, whether they’re physical or nonphysical, is always going on, and from every conceivable angle and in every way. Hardly a new thought, yet grasping it, or even speculating about it, is to touch upon a portion of the mystery of life. (And from where you are, Jane, what do you think of my very cautious approach?)

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Looking back now, the next morning, I think the possibility crossed my mind that some psychic effects were being felt, but, actually, I was so startled that I didn’t think much of anything.

I didn’t tell Jane about this at the time, but in a recent session, Seth referred to it and said that I’d been calling — psychically — for help because my back had been bothering me then badly. [...]

This sort of experience involves a sudden psychic awareness that all boundaries are for practical purposes only … There are many kinds of science, however, besides your own. [...]