“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(3:20. I worked with mail a little. Then I opened the presents Sue had left us. One of them was a large, vividly colored parrot that I managed to hang from the wooden frame of the bulletin board at the foot of Jane’s bed, so she could see it. Truly a creative and original gift. In fact, Jane said, it was a more valid and true statement of reality than the other gift from Sue—After Man, by Dougal Dixon. It’s a pictorial projection of evolutionary trends 50 million years hence. At first Jane and I wondered why Sue would give us such a book, knowing our views on evolution. Regardless of that, I eventually decided that I was glad to receive the gift, no matter what Sue does or doesn’t know about evolution. It was a beautiful compendium of all of the fallacies and distortions and wishing-thinkings concerning the scientific view of evolution.

(Naturally the book has been endorsed by all the right scientists and organizations and reviewers. “Suppose those people had endorsed your stuff like that?” I asked Jane. “I’d disown it,” she replied. Actually, the beasts and birds and fishes pictured in the book all seemed to be regressive, rather than to show what true progress in evolution might be like. I thought it really was a reflection of the author’s fears more than anything else. Jane and I spent some little time discussing it. But then, it’s impossible to write about evolution without contradicting oneself—if one believes in it, I said. The same goes for the current theories of “the origin of life” in scientific terms. There’s a section on that in the book, full of words like perhaps, maybe, must have, some, probably, could have, and so forth. What a pity. I said to Jane, that in my hand I held the best man could do about understanding his origins at this time. Pathetic.

(4:38. “Would you comment on the book we were looking at?”)

It would take some time to do so properly. As Ruburt suggested, the work is a kind of story. The author is basically too unsure of himself to call the book either fiction or nonfiction—thus he saves himself from answering many intelligent questions by saying this is conjecture, even while he takes shelter under the name of science.

(4:41 PM. Jane’s voice had become hoarse, yet nasal. I gave her some ginger ale. Her delivery had been good throughout the session. I said I’d like some more material on the book in question.

(I also suggested to Jane that if she began another Seth book, we do it without notes—straight Seth, with her writing her own introduction, say. I could always contribute an intro also. But this way, I said, we could publish works without delay, and stay even with our output. No more falling two or three or four years behind. Any other writing I might do could be on my own.

(I said that Seth may have already begun his next book, and if so, fine. I told Jane she had many good works ahead of her through the years, and that it was time we determined upon a system that would allow her to produce them with as little delay as possible. She seemed to agree with all of this, adding that already we had Rembrandt and the new Seven in the works.

(“But I’m not worried about the Seven,” she said. I always work that way on those books.”)