“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane didn’t hold her regularly scheduled session last Wednesday evening. She didn’t particularly feel like one tonight, either, but she decided to have it rather than “sit around all night.” The weather was still very humid and warm, after a 90-degree day. It’s also the first evening of fall, which began at 5:09 P.M., according to TV. Jane has been doing well, though, and yesterday walked three times — the most in one day that I can remember offhand. Her general physical improvements continue.

(All week we’ve been doing additional medical notes for the copy-edited manuscript of Mass Events. Even today Jane talked to Tam Mossman, her editor at Prentice-Hall, about various matters involving the book. I dislike the whole situation intensely. In my frustration, I told Jane over the weekend that I intended to go back to painting, starting this morning, but it didn’t work out that way. We’ve even considered withdrawing Mass Events from publication, although Tam reassured Jane this morning that things would work out all right. I didn’t mail a long letter Jane wrote him over the weekend; she covered its points in the call this morning. Now we have an idea for our own type of “disclaimer” for the frontmatter of Mass Events, based upon a very apt quote from Seth’s material that we found late in the book. I mailed Tam a copy of it today.

(We hadn’t asked that Seth discuss the Prentice-Hall situation this evening — but when Seth came through with a rather ironic smile. …)

Our books do not appear under the Parker heading. (Long pause.) They are in their way bridges between the two opposing ways of thought. They are too anti-establishment to be college textbooks, but in their way far too reasonable to be considered eccentricities — in the same fashion, now, that the Parker books are.

Many of the Parker books on the other hand emphasize creativity, the intuitions, the use of the imagination, but are relatively innocent of any clear reasoning, logic, or any feeling for tradition at all. I am simplifying here to some extent to make my point. Prentice is always, then, to some extent in a state of creative tension, as the seemingly opposed, seemingly contradictory elements are each expressed through these two divisions.

(9:23.) Give us a moment … Prentice does more than it knows it does. As a corporate entity, it also has a conscious and unconscious intent, as do all organizations, because they must mirror the people who belong to them. In its way Prentice is an educational institution. It tries to fly ahead with avant garde ideas, while at the same time protecting its flank of college textbooks. (With amusement:) It does not know if our work is fact or fiction, in the deepest of terms. It knows the work is not forged. It knows that I appear in sessions, for example, but it does not know whether or not my ideas correspond with a greater reality, or whether they are the result of an extraordinary psychological creativity.

The legal department knows how to deal with the Parker books. (Tam told Jane it’s putting disclaimers in all Parker books.) It knows how to deal with fiction. It knows how to deal with conventional textbooks — but in a fashion our books combine all of those elements, and transcend them. If Prentice were as conventional at heart as its legal department, it would not publish books at all, except perhaps for the textbooks.

(Intently in a fast delivery:) You are protected. Your work is protected. When you realize that, you act out of confidence. You did indeed catch yourselves. Ruburt mentioned those concerns, but not with the same kind of feelings that he would have, say, [last] Saturday — and when you realize that you are protected, your own intellects can be reassured enough through experience so that they do not feel the need to solve problems with the rational approach in instances where that approach is not feasible.

In the deepest of terms it was not reasonable (underlined) to nearly assume that a disclaimer, if used, would therefore be retroactively and then continuously used. It was not a conclusion based upon fact, but a conclusion based upon a reason that applied to one probability only, one series of probable acts — or based upon the probable act of a disclaimer being used to begin with.¹ So again, what we are dealing with is an overall lesson in the way in which the reasoning mind has been taught to react. These are really instances where the intellect has been trained to use only a portion of its abilities, to zoom in on the most pessimistic of any given series of probable actions — and then treat those as if they were facts.

— but do not forget that you in your ways, and that corporate entity, do indeed share an educational intent.

I will, of course, have more to say that will hopefully allow you to use your intellects in a clear fashion, to better your performances. You are quite right, again, to say that “There are elements in this situation — or in any given situation — impossible for my intellect to know,” so the intellect can take that fact into consideration. Otherwise, you expect it to make deductions while denying it the comfort it should have, of knowing that its deductions need not be made on its own knowledge alone, but on the intuition’s vast magical bank of information — from which, in larger terms, all of the intellect’s information must spring. So I think you are both finally trying to use a new approach in that direction.

“I lay on our bed, fully clothed, while waiting for Jane to finish in the bathroom. As usual, the little light on her bureau to my right was on. I lay flat on my back, with my head turned a little toward the dim light. I was quite sleepy, and fell into a state between waking and sleeping. Then I became aware that once again I was perceiving “the light of the universe,” as Seth calls it. This experience was milder than my three previous ones, but was still most intriguing.

“Now behind the door was a brilliant pulsing light — but I could see only the small portion of it at the top of the nearly-shut door. My reactions during the experience were quite objective this time. I knew what I was creating. I had none of the thrilling sensations, for example, that can sweep over me at such times.