“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

And, finally, what of our efforts to handle the steadily increasing volume of mail that’s resulted from the publication of Jane’s books? (Incidentally, we have on file most of the letters and cards we’ve received over the years.) Our latest attempt to cope here consists of three pieces we’ve prepared for correspondents: a short form letter from Jane and me; a longer one dictated by Seth in April, 1975, soon after he finished Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality; and a list of all editions of Jane’s books. (We prepared such a list in answer to many requests, and it’s being continually updated, of course.) Yet the form letters aren’t really a satisfactory answer for the correspondent who’d like a personal response from Jane and/or Seth; given our characteristics, they merely represent the best we can do within the time we have available. Jane handles most of the mail herself these days, and tries to add a few individual lines to each reply. [...]

[...] Although they bear my name, before I was finished with them I’d had plenty of help from my wife, Jane Roberts, and from Seth, the nonphysical entity who speaks through her while she’s in trance. In fact, Jane and Seth are the ones who so beautifully bring these notes to their conclusion; and in that order — Jane with some excellent material about her relationship with Seth, and Seth himself with his new letter to correspondents. Yet Jane isn’t particularly turned on by dates, session numbers, information about footnotes, and some of the other material I’ll be discussing here.

The firm decision to do this was made when we were visited by Jane’s editor at Prentice-Hall, Tam Mossman, and a business colleague who accompanied him. [...] Jane and I were really pleased, then, to get the official word. Not only would the expanded format be something out of the ordinary in itself, but it meant that with two volumes I’d have the room I needed for notes and references; excerpts from Jane’s ESP class sessions, as well as from “regular” sessions dated before and after the production time of “Unknown” Reality; a little of Jane’s poetry; and appendixes — all of which I thought would add extra dimensions of consciousness to the books. [...]

In Politics Jane also refers to certain blocks of material that first appeared in “Unknown” Reality, so I’ve adjusted the appropriate notes in the latter to account for their earlier discussion. Intrinsically there’s no conflict between Jane’s latest and Seth’s latest, however. [...] I simply want to stress that our overall goal is the publication of Jane’s books (including those produced with Seth), and that each work is a complete entity while containing within itself the necessary references to others in the series.

And Jane’s intent and mine, too. Jane’s books are records of her use of certain abilities that we think are very creative; the questions she raises present us with larger fields to investigate. [...] Seth discusses Jane’s early religious background, her “deeply mystical nature,” in the first session of this volume (the 679th), and I add some material on mysticism in an appendix to that session. [...]

[...] (I was 44 years old and Jane was 34 when she initiated the Seth material late in 1963). Jane’s early poetry, as I show in certain notes, clearly reflected her intuitive understanding of some of the concepts Seth came to elaborate upon much later. [...] Much of the response to her work that Jane receives by mail and telephone indicates this is happening. [...]

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. [...] This subject alone is so vast that Jane and I could write about it indefinitely, so I can barely mention it here.

“As Jane, I’m not discarded when I’m in such a trance. Yet I step out of my Jane-self in some indescribable way, and step right back into it when the session is over. So there must be another ‘I’ who leaves Jane patiently waiting at the shore while ‘I’ dive headlong into those other dimensions of experience and identity. [...]

[...] Many people liked that letter (they still do) — and some wrote back in response to it! Because of this, Jane and I suggest that Seth’s earlier letter be read in conjunction with the one below, for as Jane says, the two complement and reinforce each other. [...] (Seth refers to Jane by her male entity name, Ruburt; and to me as Joseph, for the same reason.)

[...] I think that basically he was unconcerned with ideas of length or time; that Jane’s and my own willingness to continue delivering and recording the body of the material were the true arbiters of its length. In that sense, then, the creative processes involved with these two volumes were endless — at least until Jane and I called a halt to them for sheer physical reasons. [...]