“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Today Jane heard from Tam that Prentice-Hall had signed a contract with a Dutch publisher for a translation of Seth Speaks into that language. The news was a complete surprise to us. Because of paper problems, costs, et cetera, the edition is to be in two volumes, and there’s a two-year time limit. Tam told Jane that at our request he’d checked with John Nelson, who in turn had checked the contract with the Swiss publisher, to the effect that the German-language translation of Seth Speaks is definitely not to be cut, as that particular publisher had wanted to do a couple of years ago. So the two foreign-language editions of that book are certainly good news —the kind that Seth wants Jane to list daily, as he suggested she do. But the Dutch language? It had never even remotely occurred to us.

(However, neither of us had the slightest idea that Seth himself would use the account—which Jane hadn’t read, don’t forget—as the subject matter for his first delivery tonight. I d say he did an excellent job of it. And his work in turn led me to what I think of as an exceptionally good idea for a book, which I’ll describe at first break.)

The father (a Mr. Moore, killed at age 47) had other difficulties. He did not want to die of a long illness. He felt trapped. He wanted to leave his wife (who is 49) and yet could not bring himself to do so. The older woman (an aunt, killed at age 77) also wanted a quick death. The wife, however, also unconsciously aware of the events, would therefore share in them.

The father in many ways wanted to save face, so that his death should indeed appear accidental, and the result of someone else’s fault beside his own. He did not want to live into an old age—but more than that, life had lost its flavor for him. He had sired his children, loved as well as he could, done his job—but there was no contemplative life to look forward to, no greater love than the one with his wife—and that love while conventionally sound enough, did not content him.

He was looking for someone like the young boy, someone whose actions would result in his death, but in a death without malice, a death that would in its way serve an important purpose. For the “accident” saved the young man’s life, and this was our father’s final gift to the world. The boy was inclined toward suicide. He would not have taken anyone with him. He wanted to die, but also in an indirect fashion, in that he could not consciously shoot himself, while he could kill himself in an event that seemed to be accidental.

The boy was filled with guilt, but a guilt that had no name, no label—a psychological guilt that was the result of his upbringing, and that perhaps involved the existence of a brother. He felt inferior to a sometimes terrifying degree.

He had nearly killed himself before in the same fashion, and also when not drinking. The accident gives him a specific event upon which to lay his guilt, but coming so close to death, his own instincts for life were rearoused, so that he is literally given a second chance.

(I told Jane that the farther back the author could reach for his studies, the better, so as to have more room for study as far as the passing years were concerned —say that he interviewed a man of 40 whose father had been killed while the boy was 19, say. The idea actually embodies several ideas, or books. A detailed study of one large family group so involved in a tragedy could easily take up an entire book. Another approach would be half and half: First the family story in usual terms; then that same family story studied with Seth’s ideas in mind. The insights that could result, Jane and I agreed, could have excellent psychological and social implications toward understanding of such seemingly senseless accidents. I think that Seth’s insights into the accident discussed this evening are a good capsule case in point, and much more penetrating than could be arrived at in usual terms.