“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The Way Toward Health is more than an account of the stay — and death — of my wife, Jane Roberts, in a hospital in Elmira, New York, just 13 years ago. I’ve long wanted to see it published while feeling, knowing, that it has much else to offer, too. Not only about Jane’s fine ability to speak in a trance or dissociated state for Seth, that “energy personality essence,” as he calls himself, but about all of the vastly complicated challenges that can, and do, arise in the course of a human life.

Ah, there’s the challenge, then — to understand our inherent creativity. We can try to mold it, to make it conform or behave, but each life has a life of its own. How fortunate! My wife’s life and work show that we can even create challenges and goals before birth, then in physical life plunge into fulfilling those qualities as we don flesh and clothing and beliefs. Yet what great, unexpected convolutions we can encounter in those challenges we’ve created! Even so, I think, ultimately we come to understand, whether on conscious or unconscious levels — or both — that we were utterly ourselves while learning along the way.

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.

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.