“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

It might be interesting to note that with the rather generous average of 3 hours per session, for 43 sessions, the material in this book was collected in about 129 hours. (This includes a few sessions other than the Seth material.) There are 168 hours in a week.

Unless otherwise indicated in the early sessions, the pointer gave yes and no answers by moving to the appropriate word printed on the board, rather than by spelling out the answer letter by letter. Also in the first few sessions the pointer very often indicated the word yes between each word of the message being received. For ease in reading this word has been eliminated when so used, without changing in any way the content or intent of the material received. Everything else, misspellings included, is presented just as received, and is taken from my handwritten transcripts of the actual sessions.

From the very beginning we kept detailed notes of the sessions, even when we were writing down strings of meaningless letters. Early in November/63 we had several sessions in which we received only gibberish, and rather lost interest. On the night of November 26 we tried once again however, and this time among the random letters were a few words and phrases; enough to make us try again on the night of December 2/63. And from that session on the material began to flow.

At first when she began dictating Seth’s answers to my questions, Jane would hear the words within, then repeat them aloud so I could write them down. Now she does not hear the material beforehand, but simply speaks it out, literally and consciously unaware of what she is going to say from one word to the next. She talks on faith or trust, she says, in a way she couldn’t do ordinarily.

Now even when Jane delivers an answer via Seth that may be five typewritten pages long, she never repeats herself, loses track of what she is saying, uses the words “uh,” “er,” etc., or changes in any way what she had said. Time alone would not permit any tinkering with the material. I have taken down each word as she dictated it; nothing has been added, eliminated or changed. It is as though Jane, in giving the material, is reading from an invisible script, so sure and straightforward is her delivery. And her speed of dictation is evidently limited only by the speed at which I can write.

As for the question of distortions in the material, and the obvious contradictions in the early sessions as far as dates, etc., are concerned: The reasons for these are dealt with by Seth as the material unfolds. One by one these problems are disappearing. We now seem able to clear up any such discrepancies by referring back to them, if we choose to, and have done so a few times. But here again time is a factor. As Seth has often said, the material will furnish its own evidence, more and more emphatically as time goes on.

Please note that in a few instances, page numbers are mentioned in the text for the purpose of cross-referencing material. These page numbers apply only to the page numbers in the trade paperback version.