“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Following the conference with her editor late in June, Jane has devoted herself to finishing her manuscript for Adventures, while I’ve worked steadily on the diagrams for it, as well as on the drawings for Dialogues. I completed the detailed pencil guides for both sets of art this week. Next comes the finished work for publication, which I’ll produce by placing a sheet of clear acetate over each guide, then rendering on that untouched surface the final version in “line,” or pen and ink. This is my own system; the acetate, riding above the penciled outlines, leaves me free to search for various spontaneous effects that are quite inhibited if I try to follow those preliminary images too literally. Then in late August, long before I had the 16 diagrams [plus two other pieces of art] done for Adventures, I mailed to Prentice-Hall Jane’s completed manuscript for that book. Adventures is scheduled for publication in mid-1975, but I’ll continue referring to it in these notes.

(In the meantime, on Saturday morning, July 27, Jane received her first copy of The Nature of Personal Reality: A Seth Book, from her publisher. She was delighted. So was I. The book’s physical appearance was most pleasing to us. As an artist, I’m very conscious of whether I think the “package” equals its contents, though since she is verbally oriented this is less important to Jane.

(Just as I had some small psychic adventures during our time off from “Unknown” Reality, Jane did too. One of hers that I’ll mention here is related to published material. During the night following the arrival of that first copy of Personal Reality, while lying quietly beside me in an altered state of consciousness, Jane received information of how “the ancients paralyzed the air.” It could then be walked upon and manipulated in various other ways. She woke me up to tell me about the experience, and to remind her to write an account of it the next day. She couldn’t identify its source, except to say that she hadn’t been dreaming. At the breakfast table, I told her I thought the material was connected to the sessions in Personal Reality on the interior sound, light, and electromagnetic values “around or from which” the physical image forms. Involved here also, I added, were certain ideas in her novel The Education of Oversoul Seven.²

(11:00. Jane’s trance had been excellent. She vaguely remembered that Seth had talked about “sleepwalkers.” I described the material briefly, then added, “It would be a joke if that information applied to our own ancestors, our cavemen, as we think of them.” Whereupon Jane said she thought it did at one level, but she didn’t elaborate.

(The morning after the above session had been held [on September 30, 1974], I asked Jane to write down what she’d told me at about 1:15 A.M. I remembered her description of it at the time, even though I’d been pretty bleary by then, but I wanted her own version for use here. [...]

(Any specific associations that might have brought the Atlantis information to mind were hidden from Jane, though neither of us had been reading or talking about it. [...]

[...] With Jane’s help the next day I found that information in the 18th session, which had been held on January 22, 1964. [...]