“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.

(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.

(In his material above, concerning Jane’s search for newer, larger frameworks of belief once she began to dispense with her old “comforting” ideas, Seth very lucidly dealt with certain aspects of the role she’s chosen for this life. However, I want to emphasize here the emotional terms of Jane’s search — and state that at times those qualities have been very difficult for her to contend with. To some degree I’ve been involved in many changes of belief also, but I’m a participator in the development of the Seth Material, not its originator; the pressures and challenges weren’t — aren’t — as demanding. [With a humor born out of many a struggle, however, I note that it isn’t easy to give up certain cherished old beliefs, even when they’re demonstrably wrong, they may fit the personality all too well…. ]

The 699th session, in Volume 1, dealt in part with dream images and subjective dream “photographs.” I used Note 1 for that session to insert one of my favorite Jane poems: My Dreaming Self. She wrote it in 1965, a year and a half or so after beginning the Seth material. Now I can add that at the time Jane actually wrote two poems on dreaming; I’ve been saving the second one for use in Volume 2.