“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Eleanor Friede visited Saturday and Sunday, as planned, and went over parts of Emir with Jane. We’ve learned that Jane doesn’t take to justifying each line of her work, so we’ll see what this means for future books with Delacorte, if any. Tam is due tomorrow afternoon, Thursday, and is bringing with him the copyedited Seven Two, as far as we know. We expect his visit to be pleasant.

(In the mail today Jane received a book I’d sent for at her request a few days ago; then we’d both forgotten about it. It was advertised in the National Enquirer: “A Doctor’s Proven New Home Cure for Arthritis,” by Giraud W. Campbell, Doctor of Osteopathy.Jane began to read through it at once, out of curiosity if nothing else, and discovered that it called for a very rigid diet. Were she to follow it, practically all we eat would be forbidden. It contained nothing about beliefs—and yet had evidently helped many. We discussed it to some extent. Later this afternoon, Jane said that she’d been getting feedback on the book from Seth and that she could have a session....

The dietary methods given in the book Ruburt read have indeed worked for many, and for the following reasons: as you suspected, a kind of conversion was attained. The people involved first of all had been told by doctors—medical doctors—that they themselves had no control over their own disease, that the symptoms could be lessened somewhat—perhaps—but that there was no hope for recovery.

Let Ruburt write something—anything—as a creative playful exercise daily, without caring whether or not it will develop into a book.

(4:35. We were interrupted by a UPS delivery of books from Eleanor Friede—so quickly had she gotten them on their way to us after her visit over the weekend. Resume at 4:43.)

(I simply wondered if Seth had any comments. The Word, by Irving Wallace, is a book on the discovery of an unknown gospel by the brother of Christ, James the Just. It’s a powerful story, although evidently written by Wallace in the contemporary genre of popular fiction these days. We thought the television adaptation contained many fine things, though—a number of excellent individual performances, although the story line was hard to follow over four episodes. Certainly neither of us had figured on following the series through the four nights. Many of the scenes, filmed on location about the Mediterranean area, were very evocative to us.)

(4:54 P.M. I thought it rather humorous, now, when Jane denied having the session early so that we would be free to watch the last episode of The Word if we wanted to. Actually, I didn’t think that was the reason.... but rather the strong feedback from Seth that had resulted from her reading the book described at the start of the session.

(The talk about the Wallaces reminded me, however, that a few months ago Irving Wallace’s daughter, Amy, had sent Jane a copy of her new book on psychic phenomena—particularly on healing.