“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Jane died in the hospital at 2:08 a.m. on Wednesday, September 5, 1984, after being there, quite helpless in certain ways, for a year and nine months. It was the third time she’d been hospitalized since February 1982. Since her death many have written to both sympathize and to ask “Why?” She had Seth, didn’t she — for whom she spoke for some 21 years; she also produced six books with him along the way (plus a number of books on her “own”). Why hadn’t Seth gotten her out of her dilemma, turned the magic key in the proper psychic lock? She was only 55 years old when she died. She could have lived for another 20 years, say, and contributed even more to our knowledge, both with Seth and by herself. She could have become world famous had she chosen to go that route.

The answers to such questions that Jane, Seth, and I arrived at are in this book. Jane was a human being first, and a very gifted psychic second. Seth did help her, many many times over the years. Beyond that, Jane and I learned that there exist great realms of knowledge and feeling as yet largely unrevealed. It would have been even finer to tap into those wondrous mazes much more, but we did the best we could. Seth still helps my wife, I’m sure. They’re united now, and in larger terms also meeting with many others they know from the “past,” “present,” and “future.” Because of certain dreams I believe that even portions of my own entity (Seth calls me Joseph) are joining in. Well, why not, since as Seth describes reality, everything exists at the same “time?” Tricky concepts and questions to wrestle with, I know, and sometimes contradictory. Enough to last for a lifetime in just this mundane reality.

I think this book shows, then, that the ways toward health can and do vary tremendously. In some stubborn and psychically grounded way we each are going to make our own choices, as human beings always have. Surely Jane’s life shows this, and in ways that neither of us were even remotely aware of consciously when we married 42 years ago.

During those 21 months in the hospital, Jane, Seth, and I said much about her physical/psychic condition, and I recorded it all in my homemade shorthand as best I could under often very stressful conditions. In all that time I missed spending up to six or more hours a day with my wife only once, because of a heavy snowstorm. For weeks after her admittance in April, I didn’t know if Jane would ever do any “psychic” work again, but three months later she surprised me by beginning a series of dialogues similar to the “world-view” material she’d produced for her books on the psychologist and philosopher William James, and the artist Paul Cézanne. Once again, she was inspired by my questions on art and related matters. “At least I feel I’m doing something I’m made for,” she said when starting the new project. She concluded it in September 1983, then over the next four months delivered a series of 71 mostly short, mostly personal Seth sessions. She finished that series on January 2, 1984 — and began The Way Toward Health the next day.

Inevitably, however, much had to be omitted from The Way Toward Health as it’s presented here — not Seth’s material, but from Jane’s and my work and notes. I owe a great deal to the very considerate help of Janet Mills, the proprietor of Amber-Allen Publishing. We saw that if all of the peripheral material for each session was included, the book would be very long. (I had a number of personal experiences and insights that I thought enhanced concepts of the Seth material, for example.) But what to cut, when to stop? This presented a dilemma for me.