“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Nor again, in presenting these private sessions and Jane’s and my travails, am I looking for sympathy. Instead, I’m passionately interested in presenting our work with Seth so as to contribute in whatever ways possible to our understanding of this reality we’re all creating together. And, dear readers, the participation of each one of you in those efforts help make that possible. I thank you, one and all.

I do want to record that while we took great comfort in receiving the mail, we also came to receive through it an additional and totally unexpected gift—one that literally we would never have asked for even if we had thought of it. Maude Cardwell, an older Seth reader in Austin, Texas, had for several years been publishing a modest monthly journal on the Seth material that she called Reality Change. When I wrote her about Jane’s latest hospitalization Maude, without mentioning her idea to me, suggested to her readers that donations would help Jane and me cope with our hospital bills. I would have never had the nerve to make such a statement. St. Joe’s, as we called the hospital, had never dunned us for money in the past, and wasn’t doing so now. Our considerable daily charges were mounting, but we had emotionally pushed their import into the background. I was able to make modest payments out of royalty income I had been saving, but this was difficult to keep up because most of that money was paid to us but twice a year. Imagine, then, our great surprise when the readers of Reality Change began to contribute: small checks; medium checks; the occasional larger check. I have every one of those letters and my heartfelt answers in a separate file that I plan to add as a unit to the collection of Jane’s and my work in the archives of Yale University Library.

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. Each discovery, large or small, will be a new truth. This has happened often as I’ve worked with the Seth books over the years. Readers have written describing similar experiences. 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.

Periodically, after answering the mail, I add it to the archives of the Seth material at Yale University Library as an integral part, a reinforcement, say, of Jane’s great body of work. It’s well preserved there. I speculate that eventually someone may write a book showing the great variety of reader reactions to the Seth material. It would—and will—be a vital addition to the work my wife began, and so help perpetuate it. Producing such a loving compendium would require much study. And a continuing one, as long as more mail arrives....

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. I’m still adding to the collection. It’s open to the public.

We had always been very comfortable in the community, and grateful indeed that we had the privilege of living there on our own terms, even though in those early years we usually took in so little money that we lived pretty much from week to week, with no security. Before we moved out of 458, though, Jane’s books began to appear in local and chain bookstores, and the very interesting mail from readers kept increasing, to our great pleasure.

When Jane entered the hospital for the last 21 months of her life, I could run all I wanted to. I usually spent the morning typing the session she had delivered the afternoon before for The Way Toward Health, answering mail, running, and running errands. I went to her room at noon and stayed until the evening, seven days a week, every week. I still remember asking myself as I trotted along on my 65th birthday on June 20: “Should I still be doing this?” My answer was yes, for that action, free of any other personal responsibility, helped me stay connected with the outside world in my own way. Jane died later that year. John Bumbalo did me an enormous favor in the hours following Jane’s death. When I came home from the hospital for the last time in a year and 9 months, John went to Jane’s room 330 and very carefully gathered up all of the belongings and artifacts we had accumulated there and brought them to me in 1730: my paintings and drawings, the letters from readers that I had put up on the walls (the hospital never complained), the session notebooks for The Way Toward Health, our books and magazines and newspapers and clothes, the flowers and other gifts from readers and from some of the nurses—all of those things that seem to accumulate almost by themselves as one seeks to create a home wherever that may be.

Please forgive me for having used too many dates in this account, dear reader. It’s my habit to be as specific as I can when communicating with others.

On Sunday we went out to breakfast, and then went to some of the Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain historical sites. (I am a student of mediumship, as well as a reader of and believer in the Seth material. Mark Twain and his wife [as well as Jane Roberts, Robert Butts, and Seth] called Elmira, New York, home for years, and appear to still be psychologically involved with the sites.)

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. I have often been interested in the vast differences in the goals and characters of the many readers who visit and correspond. 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. Many other readers have felt the same way. Rob and Jane and Seth’s magic has brought new interest and purpose into the lives of many different kinds of people. The exact number of readers is unknown, but over the years many people have visited and have written to Rob and Jane.