“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

He (Ruburt) was bound and determined to explore the nature of reality.¹ … He wanted to protect himself until he had enough knowledge to know what he was doing. He fears for the gullibility of people, and is rightly appalled at their superstitions — as you are, Joseph (as Seth calls me). Indeed, as Ruburt became aware of the little that is known, he wondered at his own daring. There was no one he could turn to for instruction. I could have helped him further, but I was [part of what he was investigating] …

(During the two weeks immediately following the 691st session, Jane kept working with the project involving the missing person; see the notes for that session. Among other things she took part in a series of lengthy telephone exchanges, usually late at night. She scored some remarkable “hits” psychically and made some errors — yet she ended up thinking that her demonstrated abilities often collided with what our society teaches us is possible in human activity. Jane told me that at times she felt a distinct yearning for understanding by the others involved in the affair; yet, because of her participation in it, her confidence in knowing what she can do was strengthened significantly. And Seth, very briefly commenting upon the search while it was still in progress, remarked to an out-of-town group of visitors that Jane was endeavoring to use her psychic abilities on her own; and that the assurance she was gaining through her efforts would be much more valuable to her than any she might derive from Seth himself “doing all the work.”

(2. This note was added eight days later. Within some personal material we received following the 694th session for May 1, 1974, Seth said in part:)

(Seth continued:) He also began to see two poles in society one highly conventional and closed, in which he would appear as a charlatan; and another, yearning but gullible, willing to believe anything if only it offered hope, in which his activities would be misinterpreted, and to him [would be] fraudulent … There was a middle ground that he would have to make for himself … to make a bridge to those intellectuals who doubted, and yet maintain some freedom and spontaneity in order to reach those at the other end. This required manipulations most difficult for any personality, and a constant system of checks and balances.

[...] In one of them I’m on a troop train [in World War II] traveling to Karachi, India, and in the other I’m asleep in a cold barrack. I wrote in the book that ‘I was conscious of every movement, sound, and odor on the train, yet conscious that I was in a barrack that was very chilly. I was also aware that both the train and the barrack were dreams, and that my body was in the chilly tent at Leesburg, Florida.’

[...] She listened carefully, then said that “there’s something there on the dreams” — meaning that Seth was around, was aware of our conversation, and would probably comment. [...] Then, taking off her glasses, she was in trance.)

(On Wednesday, March 27, we received from Jane’s publisher the page proofs for Seth’s second book, The Nature of Personal Reality: A Seth Book.¹ No session was held that night. [...] And we told ourselves that Seth was perfectly capable of resuming work on “Unknown” Reality whenever we were ready to do so, whether the time lapse involved one week or six months.

[...] The first person I talked to was our friend Sue Watkins, who has attended ESP class almost from the time Jane started it in 1967. I was more than a little surprised when Sue said that she’d enjoyed such events several times. [...]