“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Having this set published for the record is something I’ve long wanted to see take place, and Rick’s dedicated interest and time make it possible. (I told him more than once along the way that he’d better think twice—and more!— before taking on the job of publishing eight-to-ten books.) Jane died on September 5,1984, at the age of 55. When she was close to death she asked me to publish all of her work. In my grief and shock I agreed, without understanding what a challenge that labor of love was to entail. I’m still working at it 12 years later!

With the loving help of others I made several attempts over the years to publish various portions of Jane’s work, but with little success, for a variety of reasons. Also, even though I’d been so intimately involved with the Seth material from the very beginning, for example, I didn’t fully comprehend the volume of just the session material that we’d accumulated over a total of 21 years. Let alone the bulk of Jane’s other work: her poetry, novels both published and unpublished, her other published books, an unfinished autobiography, the records of her ESP class sessions, her journals and paintings, her singing in musical trance language, Sumari, her never-ending correspondence. My wife was—and is, I know, for I’m sure that she still lives—the most creative person I’ve ever met, and through her extraordinary abilities she’s left a body of work that I regard as a legacy of inquiry about our understanding of ourselves and our reality. In my opinion its “true value” is only now coming to be better acknowledged. Rick’s publication of The Early Sessions, then, is a very important advance in the marvelous journey of discovery that, I think, each one of us is inevitably involved in, that each one of us has chosen to create, in whatever way and for whatever purposes.

These eight to ten volumes are meant to show Jane’s and my growth—in the most literal way—but always that of my wife, above all else. From the start we felt that if our “psychic” work had value it should be presented as is, within all of its human connotations; not only its great successes, but with its gropings and mistakes, its questions and learnings along the way. Not edited or prettied up, but as is. Real. I still feel that way. These 510 sessions, then, are exact copies from the verbatim transcripts I made in my homemade shorthand while Jane spoke for Seth; I added notes and comments while typing the material after each session. Over half a dozen years we filed the typed sessions in 44 three-ring binders. The sessions in one of the volumes published by Rick are accompanied by my drawings of the objects used in the series of “envelope tests” we conducted, both for ourselves and long-range with a well-known scientist, over some 11 months.

I want to thank so many for their help and reinforcement that it’s unbelievable. How do I thank all of those thousands and thousands who have written, let alone the millions who have bought books and told others about them? All have helped create the living psychic reality within which Jane’s and my work has been nurtured and grown. Our work is really dedicated to one and all, then. I love to hear from readers—even if it does take me forever to answer sometimes. No letter is ever unread or unappreciated. I’ve saved them all from the beginning. Eventually they’re added to the collection of our papers at Yale University Library, while not being open to the public for privacy’s sake.

Now let me list some of those I know personally, and who have helped Jane and her work so much: Tam Mossman, Richard Kendall and Suzanne Delisle, Sue Watkins, Debbie Harris, Laurel Davies, Janet Mills, Lynda Dahl and Stan Ulkowski, Bob Terrio, Norman Friedman, Jeff Marcus, Juan Schoch, Michael Goode. And oh, yes: Rick Stack and his wife, Anne Marie O’Farrell, who’s my literary agent. I don’t know what, if anything, I’d have accomplished in carrying out Jane’s wishes without the unstinting help Anne Marie has offered in so many ways.