“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.

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.

Our books are in the regular trade department. This poses some problems for the legal department, which is given to the most literal translation of reality as interpreted through law. You have almost what you could call a schizophrenic relationship, existing, say, between Parker Books and Prentice’s trade-book division. The textbook division represents the workings of the intellect in the usual terms of rational thought, and in those books the qualities of the imagination, of the psyche, of poetry, of creativity, are quite lacking. Such qualities are indeed considered threats, for they do not accept easy answers, and are not content with the status quo.

(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.

That is an excellent example of what not to do.

(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.

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

(9:59.) Now: Ruburt’s condition is coming along very well. He is feeling more active, and he will. And he should read the last group of sessions frequently. (Pause.) Do you have a question?

Do your painting of your light experience² — and of course continue with your [other] painting.