“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“To me,” Jim wrote, “it would be a special opportunity for you to make whatever statement you might wish about Jane and her work. It would also be nice for the many readers of Jane’s books to have a chance to hear from her partner, who so beautifully and critically assisted in the birthing of the Seth books.

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 …

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.

Aside from the obvious reassurances Jane is quoted as offering to me, as a physical creature, I could comment extensively upon some of the other points she makes — especially the two I briefly refer to below; the reader may enlarge upon portions of the message also, depending upon what he or she understands of the Seth-Jane philosophy. Jane remarked, “Yet, I have changed enough since ‘my death’ that it is difficult, at times, to relate to your existence.” And, “My love for you has not changed but expanded in a way you do not comprehend.” How interesting these statements are! Does Jane contradict herself in them? No — yet the meanings within them require intuitive exploration and conscious comprehension. They’re very personal observations that at the same time echo that mystery of life I’m always referring to. I was quite aware of those statements and their implied challenges in connection with the ingredients I bring together in the next paragraph.