“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This session, following yesterday’s regularly scheduled one, was not scheduled. The reasons for it will become apparent.

(John also wanted to call to Jane’s attention a news item in the Elmira paper for Aug. 23, 1964. This appeared on Sunday, the day we arrived home from vacation, and we did not know of it. The story was largely a refutation of an article concerning drugs in Elmira, published by a national tabloid, the National Mirror. Ironically, while Elmira authorities were denying this story, there appeared in the column next to it an item detailing the theft of a doctor’s black bag, containing narcotics, from the doctor’s car in one of the local hospital parking lots. I am keeping both of these items on file.

(This evening after supper, while busy with other material, Jane received the thought that it was time to begin work on Book One of The Seth Material, a project we had discussed sometime before vacation. She thought the title should be The Physical Universe as Idea Construction. She came to the studio to tell me this, and that she also received the thought, evidently from Seth, that Donald Wollheim, her editor at Ace Books, could or would write the introduction for Book One.

The difference between value fulfillment and growth, the fifth dimension, and the expanding universe portions should also be stressed. When man realizes that he himself creates his personal and universal environment in concrete terms, then he can begin to create a private and universal environment much superior to the one that is the result of haphazard and unenlightened constructions.

When man realizes that he creates his own image now, he will not find it so startling to believe that he creates other images in other times. Only after such a basis will the idea of reincarnation achieve its natural validity, and only when it is understood that the subconscious, certain layers of it, is a link between the present personality and past ones, will the theory of reincarnation be accepted as fact.

You cannot include all the material in one book, obviously. That is why I would like the matters mentioned above to be definitely included in the first book, as other books will be based upon them.

I do not want you to take any time from your own painting to work on Book One of the Seth sessions, nor do I want anyone else to record the sessions.

The book is not something that can be done in between times, as there should be a grouping of subject matter, rather than a strict page by page rendition. I did say however that whenever possible, and as a rule, my words should be exactly quoted. The suggestion I have just given you is the one way which will give you the swiftest and most advantageous progress; and also when the book is ready under this schedule the time would be ripe.

(Jane, one foot on a chair, pointed emphatically at me. It will be recalled that Philip is the name of John Bradley’s entity. Now Jane laughed as she continued.)

Had he left the gallery when his novel was published, he would by now have one and a half times his present income from writing. That is, his yearly income would exceed what it is now.

Yet the results, you will agree, were practical. I will cut one of our sessions next week very short, to make up for this one, but I do not believe that even now you realize the service that I am trying to do you both, and myself.

Ruburt will shortly come out of his daze. I imagine he will feel rather shocked. The decision, as always, is your own. I will not reprimand you if you do not take this course. I do say that it is the best one.

(In the 75th session, July 29, 1964, page 273, Seth stated regarding Bill: “Your friend has made two friends, one older and one approximately his own age. He is of course, or has been, near water. He has been at a bar with a large keg in it. There are two houses nearby, and a front room across from a beach. There is a boat and dock. I also believe he was in a group with four men, maybe something to do with a string of shells, also.”

(Bill did make two friends, one older, and one about his own age. The young man is named Gary, and is from Boston. The older man is named Larry O’Toole, and is from Baltimore, MD. Both are artists. Gary is about 25, [Bill is 27], and Larry O’Toole is 50 or so. Bill knew Gary for about two weeks, and O’Toole for about six weeks. He has their addresses, and Gary’s last name which he could not recall offhand.

(To leave the cottages for a moment, down the street within three blocks is a bar with a large keg in it, as Seth stated. Thus, the locale described in the session encompasses a relatively small physical area. The name of the bar is the Atlantic House, and Bill states that it actually is made up of several smaller bars, each featuring a different decor. In one of these smaller bars is a very large keg, which had been cut in half; each half is set into a wall, forming a striking display.

(The party broke up rather early that evening, and Bill then went to the Atlantic House bar with Garry and Larry, where he saw the keg. Bill states that another bar in Provincetown has many small kegs dangling from the ceiling as a means of decoration, but these kegs are quite small, and do not compare with the one in the A-House for size.

(Bill states it is his belief that the “two houses nearby” do refer to the two cottages mentioned above, one shared by Gary and Larry O’Toole, with the front room across from the beach, since they are not far down the street from the A-House bar.

(Bill Macdonnel also states that as one looks out the front room of Larry O’Toole’s cottage, he sees just to the left a dock with boats, although Seth stated it as “a boat and dock,” singular. To the right of the joined cottages is the Provincetown Playhouse.

(The front room overlooking the water is, contrary to expectations, rather an unusual one in Provincetown, Bill said, since the cottages are rather crowded in against other buildings in somewhat of a helter-skelter fashion, and actually most of them do not command a view of the water. In this O’Toole’s cottage was out of the ordinary. The bar in the cottage has a small beer keg, Bill said, but he does not believe this is the one referred to by Seth.

(Let it be stated that neither Jane nor I have ever been to Provincetown, anywhere on the Cape. I spent one day in Boston about 23 years ago while in the service, on my way to an airfield in Maine by train.