“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(We did have a few “deleted” sessions for ourselves. Jane also kept her ESP class going, and within that spontaneous format she often spoke for Seth, or sang in Sumari,¹ her trance language. The break in book dictation gave me time to begin attending class regularly, and I plan to continue doing so. And when I began sitting in on class, I discovered anew that its loose structure served as a catalyst for certain little psychic events that I find most enjoyable: Tuesday night is class night, and often such an experience takes place as I rest for half an hour late that afternoon. I record each episode [no matter when I have it]. Sometimes I make a drawing also, and use that to supplement my description of the event in class.

(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.

(I haven’t read “Unknown” Reality since I finished typing the last session for it over three months ago; Jane had reviewed all of Seth’s material on the book last week yet still had to remind herself today of the contents of that [707th] session. While we went over it this afternoon I became aware of a familiar, though infrequent, sound: the honking of geese. It was the kind of transient commotion I could listen to indefinitely. The southbound flight was soon out of sight in the rainy sky, and in another few moments it was out of hearing.

(I took the sign of migration as a good omen, though, for the circumstances of the flight were strongly reminiscent of those described at the beginning of the 687th session, in Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality. It had been raining then, too, on that day last March — and as I wrote at the time, in some half-romantic fashion I’ve hooked up the flights of geese with Jane’s and my work on the Seth books. I’m still surprised that I’ve done so, for whatever reasons; but we’re ready to dig in for a winter’s work.

(As we sat waiting for the session at 8:50 Jane felt a little nervous; she often does after a layoff from book dictation. But she laughed, as she has before in such cases: “I just want to get it — the beginning — over with.” At 8:55, moving closer to that familiar dissociated state, approaching that psychological bridge which serves as a common meeting ground for Seth and herself she announced that she felt “a rather generalized idea of what Seth will say on the book stuff.” Less clear were some data about herself but she thought Seth would cover all of that along with his material on “Unknown” Reality. “I guess we’ll start out with the book….”

(“It’s good to be back with the book sessions,” she replied, smiling.

Knowledge is usually passed down through the ages in your reality, through books and historic writings, yet each individual contains within himself or herself a vast repository: direct knowledge of the past, in your terms, through unconscious comprehension.

(She wanted Seth to discuss a couple of her own questions, now that he had “Unknown” Reality underway again, so I suggested we ask for that material now. Jane hesitated. “I sense stuff on both the book and me; I don’t know what to do. Wait — there’s a practice element involved….”