“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(We’re still in the process of checking the copyedited manuscript for God of Jane, although we’re nearing the end of that job. Today Jane told me that she thought Seth would go into the famous—or infamous—disclaimer that Prentice-Hall wants to attach to Mass Events. We’d received a formal letter about that from the legal department of Prentice-Hall last Friday; today Jane had been “picking up” on it. I didn’t ask her what she’d learned; I thought it better to get the material in a session, if possible. Just before the session, Jane said that she thought Seth was “rather cavalier” in his attitude, and that my own wasn’t very good. She was only half joking.

(At 8:52: “I sort of feel him around, but I don’t think it will be very long.” Jane had been tempted to pass up the session and continue work on God of Jane, but I reminded her that I could use Seth’s information on the disclaimer in our reply to the legal department at Prentice-Hall. We knew by now that we were resigned to having the disclaimer inserted into Mass Events, but we wanted to have our say—partially out of anger and partially out of self-protection, since we didn’t believe all the legal department had told us; we wanted them to know we understood the subterfuges involved.

In other words, the books are considered to have some social life. (Pause.) You are, or we are, certainly criticizing many of the aspects of your society. In that particular book (Mass Events)—rather powerful honored aspects, and criticism will (underlined) meet criticism. At the same time, as the book’s criticism has a good import, so is the disclaimer in its fashion a creative example, again, of the book’s premise, and also would serve for that matter in a way that may not have been anticipated: with the disclaimer the book may well sell more copies by far than it would otherwise (humorously), for people will be curious about what such a volume might contain that will be dangerous to the public good.

(In our defenses here, I’ll digress a bit to note that although we may do that on occasion, Jane and I certainly do not blame others anything like we used to, or the way we still see others do. Our incidence is cut way down, in other words. Even when we do catch ourselves indulging, one might say, always in the backs of our minds lies the knowledge that, really, each of us creates our own reality, and are therefore participators in whatever events we may find ourselves enmeshed in—even those we dislike. This background knowledge has had profound effects upon us, of course.)