“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Our guests, with others who didn’t make the trip to Sayre, had been visiting the collection of the Seth material in the archives of Yale University Library in New Haven, CT. The archives contain a complete copy of my original typed pages of the Seth material in its 46 three-ring binders; many editions of the Seth books and Jane’s “own” books in English and in translations; her published and unpublished novels; her journals and poetry; her notes and papers, and mine; various published Seth journals; treatises and websites on the Internet (some nice, some not so nice); plus other relevant, indeed very evocative material like the reader correspondence from this country and abroad. [...]

Jane and I were very surprised at the initial reception of The Seth Material, then Seth Speaks and Personal Reality (our shortened terminology for those first two Seth-dictated books.) Since we had no experience with “fan mail,” for example, we had no expectations, but as the Seth titles and Jane’s own books were published she came to spend many a weekend answering that most welcome mail. [...] Time travels for sure; travels not only through the psyche but through time—even if Seth did call that quality we were so used to “camouflage time!”

The Seth material, as Jane and Rob spoke and wrote it between 1963 and 1984 has brought insights and inspiration to millions of people, including myself. [...] The Seth material was magical to me as soon as I started reading the first book I found in a used bookstore, Seth Speaks, in 1979. [...] Rob and Jane and Seth’s magic has brought new interest and purpose into the lives of many different kinds of people. [...]

[...] Once in a while Seth would come through—though usually only by invitation—but that wasn’t the norm by any means. [...] Sue Watkins, a dear friend who was to write several books about Jane’s work with the Seth material, lived just down the street for a while before moving to the country. (Sue’s latest, Speaking of Jane Roberts, is crowded with much frank and loving information about Jane and me that I have no room to go into here.) Peggy Gallagher and her husband Bill worked for the Elmira Star-Gazette; as a reporter Peg wrote several well-received articles about Jane and the Seth material. [...]

She began the sessions on December 2, 1963 and published The Seth Material in 1970. Before that welcome event, however, we had held 510 sessions over five years and two months, mainly for ourselves as we sought to understand and let develop her most unusual abilities as she spoke for and wrote about Seth, with all that such creatively unorthodox behavior implied. [...] (See that last volume for my drawing of Mischa.) It took a while after the publication of The Seth Material for the first seemingly innocuous signs of conflict within Jane’s psyche—the symptoms—to appear.

[...] I don’t remember Jane and me showing my parents any of the Seth material, for example, and trying to explain what we were searching for within it. [...] Nor did we discuss with them the information Seth occasionally gave us about them. For that to be possible, my parents would have had to understand what the Seth material was all about. [...]

[...] Seth was way ahead of me. [...] So even if Seth did help, still Jane chose to live her own life within the face and force of her own very creative present personality. Seth did offer insights, excellent ones of certain very creative depths that we more than welcomed, while all the time being quite aware, I think, that the beautiful young woman through whom he spoke—who let him speak—had her own agenda at the same time. And even though we agreed with Seth’s reincarnational material involving the three of us, and our families, still it was also intensely personal for my wife in this life that she go her own way.

Apart from my questions and speculations, I think it significant that Jane had waited until she had produced the first 207 sessions of the Seth material, over a period of a year and 11 months, before she really began to allow Seth to come through with outright personal material about her—as if first the two had to learn to know each other that well by bridging not only space but our historical or camouflage time. [...] During the nearly two years before that there were very sporadic mentions by Seth about Jane’s challenges, usually occurring as brief interludes that we deleted from the published sessions. [...]

But even trying to take into account all that Jane accomplished, I know that while I proofread the galleys of The Personal Sessions as Rick Stack of New Awareness Network sends them to me volume by volume, I’ll still come across material that is new to me. [...] This has happened often as I’ve worked with the Seth books over the years. [...] I make no pretense of keeping in mind the contents of the more than l6,500 typewritten pages of the Seth material and notes. I only know and feel, that the material will help me and others, and I do appreciate the participation of each reader. [...]

I showed our guests the portrait of Seth that I had painted from my vision in 1968, as well as my paintings of Jane both before and after her death. [...] I also showed our visitors several of my portraits from my own past lives, both male and female, that Seth had mentioned long ago, or that I’d tuned into through dreams. [...] It took me a while to start thinking that way after Jane began speaking for Seth. [...] I see Jane’s and my art as reinforcing the Seth material in quite original ways.