“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(A fourth category—publishing/advertising—developed shortly before the session began. I happened to discover a full-page ad of Prentice-Hall’s in the New York Times book section for April 27, 1975. Four books were featured, but none of Jane’s. I showed it to her, and it got as negative a reaction from her as it did me. Such instances always make me angry, almost at once.

Now: with your permission, and Ruburt’s, I have a few comments about the publishing business.

First of all, you do not realize or appreciate our joint accomplishment to date in that regard. You have induced a reputable, well-known publishing firm to accept highly unconventional material. It was not delegated, if you will forgive me, to Parker’s “crackpot” catchall. Even in the beginning, in that regard, the work was appreciated. A difference was seen between it, and the catchall, do-it-yourself manuals.

It falls, however, in a category of its own. One for which no reputable publishing house has any automatic place.

Most of them do not have the writing ability to do so. But beyond that the feeling is that one who has such experiences is by temperament unreliable. The story must then be authenticated by someone else. There are publishing niches for such books.

Our books, and I am including Ruburt’s, fall into no such neat category—presenting publishers with problems. In the beginning, particularly, and for that matter now, Ruburt has no accepted credentials. He is not a doctor of anything, for there is no one alive who could give him a degree in his particular line of research, or in yours.

(Pause at 9:49.) It would have been highly impractical, then, to expect Prentice to advertise the book. Times are changing. There is a so-called occult climate, yet we do not fall precisely into that category for them, the publishers, either; and Ruburt refuses to take advantage of “the trappings.” At least then they could say they had an occult personality who played the new part. It might be farce, from the publisher’s viewpoint, but they could sell it, and they would know how to advertise it.

Publishers deal with the culture that you know, with people who follow it. Prentice does not understand why the books have sold. Castaneda does not become Don Juan. He holds himself clearly apart from the reality he explores. If our material was not excellent it might have found its way to some spooky underground publisher.

An ordinary, reputable publisher does not know what to do with a Jane Roberts who produces a Seth of another reality—books on her own also, and books moreover of quality.

No other publishing house would have treated you any better to this point. They would have tried, most of them, to have turned Ruburt into a performing circus. Advertising men cannot handle that kind of copy. You would have been put through experiences most difficult to cope with, that would have so disrupted your peace of mind that the work might well have not progressed to this stage.

Fiction, again, puts a lovely distance between the reader and experience. Publishers can handle it. But Ruburt is saying “This experience of mine means that this other kind of mental and spiritual world-view is natural—not alien, not a part of another culture.”

They have given you much more freedom than any other reputable, now, publisher would have. The books are forming their own secure basis, and they will do far better. In the meantime you have progressed.

(Jane, as Seth, paused. As I commented after the session, it seems that we’ll have to pull in our horns as far as our feelings about advertising and Prentice are concerned; it may be a relief to do just that. But I think that Seth’s material here is the best we could possibly come across on our publisher, Castaneda, etc., and I’m sure that Jane will agree.