“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I’m sure that that “energy personality essence,” as Seth calls himself, regarded with some amusement our gropings about how best to publish his work as the sessions began to pile up. 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. (Those processes are still without end, of course, as is all creativity.)

I’ve noted the time every so often during each session to show how long it takes Jane to deliver a particular passage (and shortly I’ll explore further the time elements involved with the production of “Unknown” Reality). For obvious reasons I’ve deleted most of Seth’s instructions for punctuating his material, beyond leaving a few examples in place at the start of his Preface, or in an occasional session. But Seth is far short of overdoing such directions. Once in a while Jane or I recast his sentence structure for clarity’s sake, or we eliminate a repetitive phrase — for all of this is verbal work as opposed to prose work, which can be easily revised on the spot. Except for such changes the material is presented as received throughout both of these volumes. Whenever anything is deleted from a session — personal information, say — it’s always indicated; occasionally such material is summarized.

In his laboratories, man thus has great opportunities to obtain preprogrammed answers, based on what he thinks he already knows; his exteriorized equipment can hardly produce anything else. (A scientist doesn’t call an atom of oxygen, or one of any other element, alive, let alone conscious. Yet a collection of certain atoms assembled into a human form calls itself alive — and vehemently denies the same status to identical atoms that have the misfortune to exist outside of that human framework.) But some of the reasons for our exceedingly poor understanding of the general human state are discussed by Seth in the material he’s given over the last decade, and I’m sure there is much more to come.

Once before (in January, 1973), Seth dictated a letter for us to send to those who wrote, and it can be found in the 633rd session in Chapter 8 of Personal Reality. 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. We feel that both messages from Seth reflect much of the essence of his material, and our own circumstances and attitudes surrounding its production. Certainly we think that presenting Seth’s new letter here makes an ideal way to conclude these notes. (Seth refers to Jane by her male entity name, Ruburt; and to me as Joseph, for the same reason.)