“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

During our book sessions, which are almost always private — held without witnesses, that is — Seth speaks at a moderate enough pace so that I can take down his dictation verbatim in my own kind of shorthand. Although it’s often hard work, I find this approach more intimate and meaningful than passively using a tape recorder; I also have time to insert my own comments as we go along. Then, later, I type the sessions. I can do this much more quickly and comfortably from my notebook than I can from a tape. As I wrote in Personal Reality, I believe that Jane’s ability to deliver Seth’s material with so few changes being made in it “says important things about these sessions.” (See my notes at the end of the 610th session, in Chapter 1 of that book.) And concerning my objective observations of Seth himself, I’ll let my notes in the sessions build up whatever composite picture I’m able to construct.

It’s plain that many arguments can be brought against all I’ve written in the last four paragraphs, I suppose, yet the material in them briefly approximates the ways Jane and I look at the Seth material these days in relation to other philosophies. Especially do I like the fact that Jane’s work, her contribution to our thought, comes out of her psyche unaided by laboratories, statistics, or tests. That is, our idea of real testing consists in watching to see how the Seth material can assist in practical, everyday living. Other kinds of tests, more “formal” ones that we carried out in 1965–66, are detailed in Chapter 8 of The Seth Material; it’s easy for us to forget now that those early tests were quite successful, and could be resumed at any time. When they were held I wondered (as I still do) why the human animal, of all the creatures on earth, felt it necessary to construct laboratories in which to “prove” what it really is, what its abilities — telepathic, metabolic, or whatever — really are. This subject alone is so vast that Jane and I could write about it indefinitely, so I can barely mention it here.