“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Timothy Foote, senior editor in charge of the book review department for Time Magazine, interviewed Jane and me today in connection with a cover story he is to write about Richard Bach and Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

(Some time later Jane told me she picked up that when Seth spoke Timothy was suspicious—“Seth would speak now, you see, in order to make an impression,” etc.

(Timothy Foote told Jane he would review Seth Speaks for the magazine. We didn’t ask him to do this. He told us his review for Richard Bach wouldn’t “be hostile;” he didn’t particularly like the book. Jane, liking Timothy Foote, told me later that had he stayed for the evening she would have had a session for him; yet we feel there were reasons he didn’t stay, and that things worked out for the best all around.

For he is a kind, well-intentioned, intelligent man, searching to make sense of the nature of reality by using the yardstick of available beliefs. His kindly inner skepticism is the same as that that is within many of the magazine’s readers. They will (in quotes) “want to believe” Seagull and its story, for example, but they will not come from any homogenous background of acceptance, necessarily. Do you follow me?

(To me:) Your attitudes had something to do with it, but there is also an inner harmony, in that events happen when they are ready. Your leaving Artistic was also an element. Otherwise your attention would have been too divided. The message is now clear enough and securely enough established, so that it can ring out freely.

Let me begin humorously by saying, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”

(Jane told me after the session that this quote refers to a well-known newspaper story of some years ago.)

(Added Note: Timothy Foote also told Jane and me that he’d like to do a feature story on Jane, Seth and me for Time Magazine, but that it probably wouldn’t ever be done—the magazine being “too secular”—Timothy Foote’s words. I don’t know whether he meant cover story, a la Dick Bach.