“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The purpose of this book is to introduce you to Seth and the Seth Material. Though Seth has appeared only once in a physical materialization, Rob has seen him clearly enough to paint a portrait of him that hangs in our living room (see the illustrated section). Through me, Seth has produced a continuing manuscript that runs well over five thousand double-spaced typewritten pages, in not quite five years’ time. [...] Seth certainly hasn’t “stolen” any of my own creative energy for his own purposes.

[...] They had read my first book, knew about Seth, and had attended a few classes, but they had never witnessed a Seth session. [...] I began to speak for Seth. [...]

We were having a spontaneous Seth session. It served to introduce the students to Seth, and I will let a few excerpts from it serve the same purpose now, introducing Seth to those readers who have not heard of him:

Seth spoke through me for over two hours, so quickly that the students had trouble taking notes. [...] Seth’s dry, sardonic humor shone from my eyes. [...] Seth was enjoying himself in the guise of an old man, shrewd, lively, quite human. [...]

As of December 1969, my husband, Rob, and I have held over 500 Seth sessions, over a period of five years. My first book in this field, How to Develop Your ESP Power, briefly explained the circumstances leading to my interest in ESP, and the experiments that led to my introduction to Seth. Since then, Seth has demonstrated telepathic and clairvoyant abilities on occasions too frequent to mention. [...]

To me it was tantamount to intellectual suicide to even admit the possibility that Seth actually was a personality who had survived death. Nowhere in my first book did I say that I thought Seth was exactly what he said he was: “an energy personality essence no longer focused in physical reality.” [...] Nowhere did I find an explanation as logical and consistent as that given in the Seth Material itself.

I began to have out-of-body experiences (astral projections) as I sat in the living room, speaking for Seth. Seth described what I saw while my own consciousness was miles away, perceiving locations and events in another town or state. Our files contain statements from two brothers in California, for example, asserting that Seth correctly described their home and neighborhood while I spoke for him in Elmira, New York, some three thousand miles away. [...]

Excerpts from some of the early sessions will also be included in the first chapters, since Seth’s ideas were then as new and strange to us as the sessions themselves. But the main emphasis will be on the story itself, from the first Ouija board experiment through the first instance when I startled Rob and myself by speaking for Seth; and the changes in our attitudes as further developments occurred. I’ll also include examples of Seth’s clairvoyant abilities.

The philosophical and psychological implications of mediumship and ESP phenomena and the possible origins of the Seth Material, along with several questions concerning Seth’s independent reality, will be considered. I’ll also give Seth’s advice as to the development of psychic abilities.

[...] I borrow Ruburt’s [Seth’s name for me; in addition, Seth always speaks of me as male] with his consent, but what I am is not dependent upon atoms and molecules and what you are is not dependent upon physical matter. [...]