“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I started the first rough draft for these notes on April 16, 1975. 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.

As in Seth Speaks and Personal Reality, the usual notes are presented at break times, but I’ve indicated the points of origin of what would ordinarily be footnotes by using consecutive (superscription) numbers within the text of each session; then I’ve grouped the actual notes at the end of the session for quick reference. For consistency’s sake, these notes are printed in the same smaller type throughout both volumes. Footnotes will be found “in place” only when they refer to a specific appendix in the same book. So for the most part, these approaches keep the body of each session free of interruptions between breaks.

In the notes I’ve tried to say exactly what I mean, no more and no less, and to watch out for unwitting implications. Things can get complicated, though, and at times while preparing these volumes I found myself wondering just how to make clear certain points of reference without leaving the reader confused by dates, session numbers, or other matter. Although I think my system of presentation has a kind of order, still it’ll take study at times, and I can only ask the reader to patiently go along. I don’t believe such instances are too many.

The next four paragraphs contain some information on our publishing schedule that I’ll present as simply as I can. Originally I hadn’t planned on dealing with such material in these notes, but after talking it over, Jane and I agreed that it should be given here after all. There are various titles, section numbers, and dates to keep in mind, so these passages may take some rereading.

One can have a lot of fun with numbers. They can, for instance, be used to explore different perspectives of the same subject — in this case, time, the quality that’s just been under discussion. The two volumes of “Unknown” Reality contain 65 sessions. Jane delivered these for Seth over a period of a little more than 14½ months. This elapsed time includes more than a few weeks during which she gave no book dictation at all, of course, but I was curious to get an approximate idea of the number of hours she actually spent in producing the entire work.

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. With this system she acknowledges more letters than ever before, yet it’s ironic that there are still more to answer simply because of the greater number received.