“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

As the personal material began to unfold we started calling it the “deleted” material because we kept it separate from the more general “regular” or public sessions. After all, in the conventional sense what was one to do with personal material from whatever source but keep it personal? As the years passed after 1963 we acquired two sets of Seth material, then, one public, one private. It wasn’t until after Jane’s death in 1984 that I took the “time” to understand that Jane’s Seth material—her great passionate body of work—really didn’t need to be categorized as public or private—that all of it was simply one multifaceted creative entity.

Anyhow, the deleted material from the very beginning is now due to be published. As soon as Rick Stack finishes publishing The Early Sessions (probably with Volume 9, it seems at this time), we plan to launch the Personal Sessions series. Actual title and number of volumes unknown at present. I’m proud to be involved in this work with Rick and his wife, Anne Marie O’Farrell, who is my literary agent. Their long-term commitment is all important.

For some years Jane and I devoted much work to learning the processes detailed in all of those early unpublished sessions, which were followed by her series of published books like The Seth Material, Seth Speaks, The Nature of Personal Reality, and so on. My wife’s later deleted material even contains a complete and unpublished book that she delivered just for me, about the artist Rembrandt van Rijn. Page by page, Jane presented her gift to me during the last year of her life, when she was hospitalized. I’m going to be most interested in the responses of others to Seth’s book about that highly creative and world-famous individual. I already know that it’s good!

And so the unification of more facets of the Seth material continues. I trust that I’m offering enough intriguing hints in this essay to keep readers interested in pursuing Jane’s and Seth’s and my loving work. Apropos of that statement, what’s left after publishing the deleted sessions? Well, how about the transcripts in book form of the ESP classes Jane conducted from 1967 to 1978? Rick Stack was one of her students, with friends often making the weekly 400-mile-plus round trip from New York City to our apartment in upstate Elmira, NY. (And the members of that group had to be back in the city to go to work the next day! Jane and I used to marvel at their endurance.) Rick recorded and has produced many audio tapes of Jane and Seth speaking in those classes; at this time he’s also producing an additional group of tapes. Then there’s Jane’s business and personal correspondence; much of her poetry; her journals; her unfinished autobiography; several novels she wrote before publishing the three Oversoul Seven books; the later essays she dictated to me, while in the hospital, about Seven’s childhood; her family history as far back as it can be researched; an objective biography of her physical and creative lives including her two marriages, and Jane’s and my struggles to survive before the advent of the Seth material. And there could be more; there always seems to be more, I’m glad to note.

How long would it take to publish all of those categories? I don’t know who would have the patience to read them, but I’d really like to see all of them out there, on the record. Part of the Collection, as I call it, is already available at the Yale University Library, but how many have the time to visit there? Of course, I can always indulge my secret desire and write my own book about Jane and me. All I’d need is the “time” to do that while overseeing the projects already listed. The book would include Jane’s simplistically beautiful and brilliantly colored art; also my own quite different art—especially those drawings and paintings of and from my dreams that began to blossom as Seth discussed his dream material. Some of his work is presented in The Early Sessions. In all modesty, I think that my art and its subject matter are unique; that for each one of us dreams are an original and unending source of inspiration and knowledge.

In the meantime, I thank each reader for caring. Now if only I can catch up, once again, on answering the fan mail! I’m most fortunate that people continue to write, for it shows that Jane’s work still lives. I welcome each letter and package, just as I know Jane does, and I save them all. Oh-oh: Now there’s another idea for a book—one built around the fan mail, with permissions, of course. Hmmm…

Sayre, a community of about 7500, only 20 miles from Elmira and just across the Pennsylvania border, is my hometown. It’s loaded with memories for me. Jane and I also spent the first four years of our marriage here, before moving to Elmira in 1960. Laurel and I bought the house in Sayre, just around the corner from the house I grew up in, to get more living and working room. Now each time we make the beautiful drive to Elmira, it’s like moving back in time—just like it used to be when we traveled from Elmira to Sayre. And I speculate that Jane and Seth watch Laurel and me with much amusement now as we manipulate that quality called “time” on our journeys back and forth between the two houses…