“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

During her journey (and mine) I helped her publish 19 volumes of the Seth material, fiction, and poetry, and since her death in 1984 I’ve added 12 more so far, including this first volume of The Personal Sessions. I’m sure that Jane knows what I’m doing, and identifies with the poignancy I feel as I begin this latest publishing venture. That very poignancy enriches the value of this long-range endeavor for me as, I trust, it will for others.

I’ve noted that many of the sessions in this personal series will not be complete, but deleted excerpts from published sessions. Often over the years Jane and I tried to balance the subject matter of the sessions as Seth sought to help us in whatever way. This approach included what I thought Jane allowed him to say.

Reading these private sessions, one can legitimately ask: “Well, if Jane Roberts was so smart and Seth was so great with all of that personal stuff, why did she come down with the symptoms to begin with? Why couldn’t he cure her, or at least help her?” My answer right here is that those questions were and still are answered to the best of the abilities of Jane, Seth, and myself in these private sessions, even while I keep in mind Frank Watts’s references to Jane’s “Timidity has roots of rage.” from “Previous hates unresolved.” These sessions will detail in many ways and times why my beloved wife, even with all of her creative dedication to her chosen path, ended up with what finally came to be her intractable physical impairments. Part of the answer, as I’ve already noted, is that because of her strong fears from early childhood on, Jane did not allow Seth to tell us all he could have. Not that she was consciously aware of why she refused, and not that the elimination of that barrier alone would have magically wiped away the challenges the two of us were creating. But again and again I felt, I knew, that reincarnational factors were involved, concerning not only Jane, Seth, and me, but a number of other “past” personalities and influences from any of the three of us, and in various camouflage time frames. And what about that influence from the “future,” since Seth maintained that all is now? I didn’t berate Jane to open up more psychically. I saw her struggles (and had plenty of my own). I sensed walls, barriers, and complications there. Some of them arose from the very uniqueness of her position. After all, here she was, speaking in trance for a personality who told us he’d last lived on Earth in Denmark 300 years ago—even if there is no such thing as time!

Ed told me that his car was in a garage for repairs. Tomorrow he was to take the bus from Schuylerville to mail his weekly set of strips to the syndicate via the faster service provided by the post office in Saratoga Springs. If I drove upstate, he suggested, I could meet him late in the day at the post office, and then we could go out to his place. Evening was approaching at the end of my 200-mile trip when we met. Now Ed had a new idea after we’d become reacquainted. I paraphrase all of his dialogue even though my memory is good: “Bob, there’s a couple you’ve got to meet—her name’s Jane Zeh and her husband is Walt. She writes poetry, did a column for The Saratogian. I think she’s got real ability. They have an apartment here in town, and her mother lives on Middle Avenue. I’d like to see the place where she grew up—it’s not far out of our way out of town...” Ed added that a few days later, on Saturday night, the Zehs were to join a gathering of friends at his and Ella’s home in Schuylerville.

As I’ve written, Jane’s two short and fruitless stays in the hospital had left her deeply skeptical about the value of conventional medical treatment in her case. She was still most reluctant to return to St. Joseph’s, but when her symptoms became so severe that I could no longer care for her at 1730 she went back into the hospital in April 1983. For the last time. For one year and 9 months until her death. In all of that camouflage time I missed spending several hours a day with her in room 330 just once. The Elmira area was hit by more than a foot of snow. I couldn’t get my car out of the garage; the streets weren’t plowed, businesses remained closed. Radio bulletins advised all except emergency workers to stay home. I couldn’t get through to my wife by telephone. Sometimes I would call her late at night to offer reassurance.

Trust, then, entered in in a unique way, even before Jane opted more consciously for more direct help from Seth within the limits she created. As I’ve noted, she avoided doctors and the hospital as much as possible until her last long stay in St. Joseph’s.

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.

Many have written; many still do. I like each letter, even the occasional disapproving ones, and reply as best I can. Sometimes I send copies of my drawings and paintings. I’ve always been gratified by the response to Jane’s work, just as she was and, I know, still is. I claim little credit for her success, however. I only helped her. I’m simply pleased by, and very respectful of, the public response to the Seth material. That response is much more important and helpful to the material than my own feelings—though obviously I’m quite aware of these, and respect them too!

I do admit that in recent years I’ve wondered more and more why artists don’t deal with at least their own past-life images. Surely these would be as original as any conventional self-portrait. Surely the artist could have, would have, insights into such existences but for a number of reasons—fear of ridicule, for example—choose not to investigate them. Especially in public ways! Yet artists are supposed to be uninhibited to express their feelings and knowledge. An incredibly rich and very nearly untapped, psychic and psychological field lies open for exploration, I think, waiting, waiting. I also believe that opening up past-life fields would enrich us all. In my naiveté I can see a whole genre of art growing. My own projected portfolio of art will include at least several past-life images of me. I’ve already painted them (but can always add more). Recently I finished a past-life portrait from my vision of a friend Jane and I had known years ago. Jim hasn’t seen it; we lost touch with him before moving to the hill house in 1975. Why did that past-life image of him come to me in 2002? I painted my image of Jim with tiny crosses in the pupils of his eyes, and with his eyes themselves brimming with tears. I wrote: “Always very religious in his lives, Jim cried with compassion for his fellow human beings.” The resultant oil is one of my best.

We quickly made friends with the family across the road. Joseph and Margaret Bumbalo had three children, all living away from home. The youngest, John, who visited his parents occasionally, was attracted by the ideas in Jane’s work. (Now that was a coincidence!) He had, and still has, no doubt, a most powerful and moving baritone voice. He was also restless. When we met, John had little interest in an operatic career, as far as I recall, yet had taken professional singing lessons and given auditions. When he crossed the road to visit I would encourage him to sing a bit for us a cappella. The few brief times he did so I thrilled to the power and quality of his voice; I could feel it surging within me, as could Jane. John’s masculine power, while different from Jane’s Seth voice at its masculine strongest, represented the only time I’ve personally heard a voice that could match Seth’s voice at its best. Both voices could make my ears ring, conjuring up deep-seated wordless emotions that usually lay unsuspected within the psyche. Very revealing, Jane and John.

Laurel and I have lived in Sayre since early in 2000 while 1730 sits there unoccupied. The trees and bushes around the house are taller and more luxurious than ever. They make it harder to see the house from the street corner, almost as though they’re offering protective shelter in their own ways. We hire help to maintain the lawn, while each year I vow to fix up the place. Laurel makes the 15-mile trip from Sayre much more often than I do: to look the place over, to pick up the junk mail that’s still addressed to us there in spite of the notices I’ve sent out, and to scatter feed for the birds and animals. She knows I still feel sadness about 1730. I sometimes think I’m almost cowardly about visiting it, as though I fear my emotions could still erupt if I weren’t careful. And of course they do, but I let them out without a struggle usually, in a very subdued manner. And today my feelings about visiting 458 with our guests were also fresh in my psyche.