“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Even today’s mail, which we read after finishing our discussion, contained several beautiful examples of points I’ve described above. This brought up another matter—our being confronted with the work we have published, as well as by Mass Events and God of Jane. No way to get away from those fifteen books of the past, I said, so to that extent we have to live with the results they engender. I too wondered about dispensing with answering the mail, while being very reluctant to do so, since many of the letters are openly laudatory, and we save them for reference [although we haven’t actually used any for such purposes]. But therein lies trouble, too, I said, because they would reflect Jane’s concern about public exposure, her fears about leading people astray.

You have first of all to explain your definition of personality, to attempt redefinitions of a very emotional kind, for when you are speaking of, say, space and time, that is one thing. When you are asking people to reexamine the whole matter of personal identity, you are setting conditions that may frighten many of them. Ruburt feels that he could, for example, explain any of his own books from his own framework quite well. To explain my books is something else again, and in that manner of speaking, my books are self-evident also.

Before even hearing the poetry no such audience, Ruburt felt, would question the fact of poetry itself—its techniques, traditions or value. My books, however, by their very existence appear in a world that largely does not concern itself with anything but the most surface elements of psychological reality. (Long pause.) The matter of duplicity almost immediately arises. Ruburt feels the existence of innumerable barriers in that regard—having, he feels, to fend with the questions that ensue.

(I doubt if finances are a problem, incidentally, as I explained to Jane. We have two books coming out this year; when they earn back their advances there will be income from them. Many of Jane’s other books also produce a yearly royalty income in the meantime. She may do other books than on matters psychic, and these will earn money also. If our income dropped because we committed ourselves to no new books, the royalty and the interest on our savings would be much more than adequate to live on, for then state and federal taxes would melt away. Financially, then, now is an ideal time to experiment with any changes we may want to put into effect. Jane’s poetry book is due in 1981; she’s started a “Seven.”