“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.

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.

(Our conversation about this during break led me to what I think is an exceptionally good idea for a book—one done even in conventional terms. It would be for the author to conduct a survey of the surviving members of families involved in such accidents, to study the after-effects, see what changes the tragedy had brought about in their lives, their habits, ways of thinking and looking at life—in short, the detailed study of each family case history would comprise an intimate, in-depth probing of all the complicated effects that had resulted from that single tragic event.

Our work, in those terms, may have turned into a career, but not a career that you can equate with others. You are writing new rules. You are not good lawyers, or physicians, or whatever. You purposefully, while speaking to your times, speak to those beyond your times and to the future. Instead of children you send ideas into the future.

There are many new affiliations that will be developing in the future, new fields of endeavor. It is far more important that psychology understand our work, for example, than that your current physicists do.

(10:51 PM—At break we’d also expressed our fears about Jane’s progress, beside talking about the book idea. Jane was especially concerned that every time she improved so far she’d regress because she’d touch upon certain hidden fears that she’d adopted as protection against the world. I added to the discussion by noting that I was deeply concerned that she’d reinforced her own self-doubts through what I said about the world myself, over the years. Sort of a vicious-circle idea.