“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

I couldn’t believe it when I realized that my wife had been dead for a week. As I lived and worked in it, our house looked the same as it ever had. In spite of my sorrow, I presented a cheerful face to the world; I talked and joked, and did everything I was supposed to do. I also discovered what must be a very common phenomenon: Those who knew of Jane’s passing became instantly self-conscious when we met. I felt their embarrassment at their damned-up sympathies, and their fear of the same thing happening to them. They didn’t want to hurt me further. Amazingly, I found myself offering comfort to them, to help them surmount such barriers so that we could talk. My visitors reminded me anew of how private an event Jane’s death is for me, yet how universal it is. How many uncounted quadrillions of times has that transference from “life” to “nonlife” taken place just on our planet alone? And I don’t believe that anyone has tried to cope with questions of life and death any more valiantly than Jane did.

As soon as I took Jim Young up on his word that I could make whatever statement I want to about Jane’s work, I knew that this Preface would contain relatively little about Seth, Dreams and Projection of Consciousness itself, and I wrote to Jim about this. The book stands perfectly well on its own. These notes, then, will contain material not only about Jane, but my own involvement with her, her work, and her death. I trust that even though physically she’s no longer with me, my wife agrees with my choices, for she helped me learn that the one truly unique thing I have to offer the world is my own creation of it.

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.

[...] His wife was fifty-three, Anna. [...]

[...] The cobbler and his wife had no children. [...]

[...] His wife’s name was also Sarah. [...]

[...] “In London, I don’t know why, Albert’s wife liked to go to the bakery shops. [...]

[...] Phillip, on the other hand, is performing no such compensations, except for one instance of choosing a good-looking wife and therefore permitting himself to treat her kindly.

[...] Rob and I had never met his wife. [...]

[...] After his death, the second wife went to California to live with the stepson and his family, a fact that further upset Malba.

But when I read the session, I thought of Rob sitting there, listening to what I thought of as criticism, while his wife paced the room “telling him off” in another voice and supposedly for another, invisible personality. [...]

[...] I suggest a brief break, and this time my dear Joseph, do copy your strolling wife and move about.