“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Earlier today Jane and I had been discussing how best to go about writing her projected book on the Seth material. At the moment Prentice-Hall is considering a prospectus for this book. We decided we would like Seth’s help with this problem, and so expected to hear him speak this evening.

(“Good evening, Seth.”

(Long pause, eyes closed.) Within certain obvious limits, you will receive the same basic material whether or not you attempt to limit or specify the subject matter of sessions or not.

The personal matters, questions, affairs of daily concern, that may be mentioned because Ruburt’s emotional image triggers their inclusion—these will always be used as examples to give you material that you would receive in any case.

You do direct the focus of the material in that, again, your emotional interests are important. They automatically reach out in certain directions. I respond to you as any personality responds and do not consider you simply as scribes, ready to write down my words of wisdom, regardless of your own interest.

The emotional basis does not limit the quality or extent of the. material, but adds to it. The information is carried along in the emotional stream. If there are small side-streams now and then, they always return to the larger one. If a few bits of debris go sailing merrily down the stream (humorously), the answer is not to cut off the stream but to recognize the difference between what the stream carries.

Your personalities, in a symbol now, form the two sides, the two banks, of the stream through which the material flows. The bottom represents the underground connections of your own past lives. The interworkings of your personalities form the various currents within the stream. The material is that which flows through the stream. I am the source of it, for your practical purposes. (Smile.) I am the land from which the two banks are formed.

Now it makes no difference, basically, how you present the material, as long as it is presented; whether you let the stream flow on consecutively, one wave at a time, or whether you present it a bucket at a time, scooped up from various places. Pure, sparkling (smile) water is pure sparkling water, and a taste will lead to more when the populace is in a period of drought.

Some must be carried in buckets to irrigate inner lands. The material is a source. It will be given to various people in various ways. It is not up to you to decide which way is best, nor even to me. It will be presented therefore in many ways through the years. The consecutive method, from the early sessions through, will appeal to those who have little knowledge of such affairs, and will serve to let them (smile) get their feet wet, bringing them this time into the stream little by little.

To think in such a way could be to limit the good the material can do, and the numbers and kinds of people it can reach. Like action, the material moves out in all directions. It can be presented at various times in various ways, each complementary. There will be, at some time, those interested in a study in depth of the material; and as Ruburt’s students have seen to it that their need is satisfied, so will these people see to it. This will involve a session by session study.

This allows you to take full advantage of knowledge you did not have when the sessions began. Let him, whenever possible, include along with the material on any given topic, my personal comments. It should be obvious in the book that the material is not disembodied but sifted through the personality that is mine. For this is part of the message.

It is not to be simply the presentation of ideas, though these are, of course, a main part of the whole. It is also to be the fact that a highly alive individual, such as myself, gives the material. For if you will forgive me, the material is much more significant because it is backed up (deeper voice) by someone who is no longer within your system.

In other words, the inclusion of my personality characteristics with the material will take away any long-white-gowned spiritualistic connotations, and put the survival personality thesis in a more proper light. As any good writer should know, tell Ruburt he need not explain my characteristics; simply include excerpts that show them.

If he does this to the best of his ability, he will consider his excerpts from two standpoints—what to say, and how I say it, so that the personality and the material are clearly shown together. It will make it lively. (Long pause.) The personality is action, and as I have shown myself to you in sessions, this has added to the action of the sessions.

My personality is what makes the material unique, for it is information sifted through an individual that is unique from all others. Ruburt therefore should not attempt to disentangle the material from my personal characteristics. It is perfectly proper, beneficial and legitimate for him to make any intellectual investigations he chooses, concerning differences in perception in our sessions, and when he is psychically involved on his own, and all other, intuitive or intellectual studies of this sort he has in mind. But he should not present my ideas as if they come from thin air, for this is to rob the material.

I say this out of no misguided egotism, but because the essence of personality is the only meaningful basis behind idea. Any other approach would rob the material of rich dimensions, for I am the proof in my own pudding, you see. This is not the Cayce material, with information seemingly coming from some vast storehouse of knowledge. In those terms no such storehouse exists.

Knowledge does not exist independently of the one who knows. Someone gave Cayce the material. It did not come out of thin air. It came from an excellent source, a pyramid gestalt personality, with definite characteristics, but the alien nature of the personality was too startling to Cayce, and he could not perceive it. (Pause.) I am giving you the material through a personality that you can understand; one that is mine, one of my favorite selves. (Smile.) In this way the point is made so that it is clear.

(10:10. Jane snapped out of trance easily. Certainly this had been one of her longer deliveries during the sessions’ four years. She resumed in the usual Seth manner at 10:30.)

(“Good night, Seth, and thank you.”

(11:02. Again Jane came out of trance easily. She said that at the end of the session, just before she left trance, she got a message that she would hear from the publisher Prentice-Hall, within three days concerning the prospectus they have for the book on the Seth material.