“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Valerie’s material raises as many questions as it gives answers for, of course. Are her messages really from Jane, or is she “only” telepathically picking up from me what I want to hear, and flashing it back to me from her trance states — as communications from Jane? An unbelieving scientist would say that Valerie is hardly in touch with a discarnate Jane, since science doesn’t accept survival of death. Nor would the idea of reaching Jane’s world view be considered, or telepathy from me, for both of those concepts are scientifically unacceptable. The most parsimonious view — the simplest, stingiest one — would be that through studying the Seth Material Valerie subconsciously divines the replies I want from my dead wife, and in all subjective innocence comes through with her trance messages for me, to fit my own stubborn belief in Jane’s survival.

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 …

Now, in a deep trance the subject, though fully aware of what is happening in the trance, may remember nothing of it afterward. The awareness of plant life is also somewhat like that of the subject in deep trance. [...] But like the trance subject, our plant is aware. [...]

If you remember what you know of the trance state — in a light trance, you are able to maintain awareness of self, your environment and your place in it. [...]

Deep is the sleep
Of the moss and the pebble.
Long is the trance
Of the grass and the meadow.
Footfalls come and footfalls pass,
But no sounds can break
That green-eyed trance.

Malba insisted that she was the same girl I saw die in Levonshire, England, in my earlier trance, except that her death had taken place when she was fourteen, not seventeen as I had reported. [...]

[...] I was in trance, of course, but, knowing him, I can well imagine how he must have stared at me as I strode back and forth speaking in that deep Seth voice and talking to Rob in such a manner. [...]

[...] When I came out of trance, Mark was staring at me intently.

[...] Already in trance, I guestured to the paper and Seth began to speak:

The emotional feeling of this brief statement was alive in the room when I came out of trance. [...]

In the next session the following night, Seth launched into the nature of my last trance experience and used it as a stepping stone for his first real discussion of the nature of human personality. [...] From here on, he would continue to comment on my trance experiments and teach me to regulate them.

(With a laugh, Rob told me that as Seth, I’d been pacing up and down the room, giving “myself” the dickens about the trance experiment, then switching to the humorous comparison of his voice and mine. [...] Back in those days, I wasn’t about to have a trance personality order me about, even for my own good. [...]

(Still in trance, I turned off the brightest of our two lights, then opened the blinds. [...]

[...] On the other hand, I only knew what had been said when the trance (or the fun) was over. [...]

[...] So I didn’t feel like going into a trance.

[...] This time, I didn’t have to wait for him to report what I’d done while I was in a Seth trance. [...]

[...] Two sessions a week were more than sufficient, I thought — I was afraid of going into trance at the drop of a hat.)

I was in trance almost at once. [...]