“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now I’d like to briefly comment on the handling of the notes, excerpts, and other such matter. After Jane began delivering this work it soon became apparent that my notes for it were going to be longer than they are in Seth Speaks and Personal Reality. The very way Seth was presenting his material required this. Jane and I liked the idea because it meant something different from the two previous Seth books, but at the same time I was concerned that the notes would become too prominent. (I felt this way even though Seth told me in a private session in June, 1974: “The notes will take care of themselves. Do not worry.”)

Once we’d decided to publish in two volumes, Jane, Tam, and I agreed that we didn’t want to move all of the supplementary data to the back of each book, as is often done in such cases. Not only would the reader be constantly involved in looking up specific items, but we felt that the shorter notes especially would be too far removed from their intimate positions within the sessions; we wanted these to enhance individual sessions directly without getting in the way, so I worked out a compromise which offers some sort of orderly presentation without being too rigid.

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.