“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] To some very small extent, I have begun to explain this in the Seth material. [...]

This material is not for those who would deceive themselves with pretty, packaged, ribboned, truths—truths that are parceled out and cut apart so that you can digest them. That sort of material does serve a need, and there are many who give it and it is helpful for those who need it. This material demands more. [...]

(The class was discussing the “other personality” (Seth II] when Seth entered the discussion.)

(There was a comment about Seth’s statement, as to how he had been around in a few of Rochelle’s endeavors. Seth clarified this. [...]

We didn’t realize it at the time, but in these early sessions, Seth was gently leading us down the “garden path” — it became more difficult to think of the world in the usual terms, for example. Even though I had come to no conclusions as to what Seth was or wasn’t, the Seth material itself fascinated me. Its source in Seth made it only too clear that other channels of information and experience were open to us beside those we had known earlier.

Rob was intrigued not only by the material but by Seth himself as he began to manifest his own personality more clearly. My voice had been undergoing changes, becoming more similar to what we now call the Seth voice — deeper, lower, richer in tone than mine and more masculine. But on this particular night, Rob watched, amused, while Seth told him in no uncertain terms what he thought of my experiment — using my own lips to do it! [...]

(In an earlier session, Seth said that while on vacation in Maine, we both unwittingly created two images — versions of ourselves — and then reacted to them. See The Seth Material.)

[...] He could see the change that came over me while I was speaking for Seth, and Seth inspires confidence. Rob liked Seth immediately. [...] Through me, Seth related to Rob. [...]

(Attached is more of her own material that “came” to her. [...] It’s excellent material, as Seth said, and is a continuation of that she received on February 6; see the end of the last deleted session [for February 17].

[...] And one that Jane and I soon became aware of even on that first very limited tour we took to help publicize The Seth Material.)

(I intend to now begin compiling a list of questions for Seth that grow out of his recent sessions—hence his remark above about such a list. [...] This list can also be used as a guide to refer us back to the body of material from which any particular quote is taken.)

[...] Simply, I thought it would be a good idea if Seth would tell us about what good things we’ve managed to accomplish through the years as far as Jane’s symptoms go. [...]

On Friday, October 9, 1970, I received a letter from a reader, Peg Boyles, about my book The Seth Material. With it she included an excerpt from Living Time by Maurice Nicoll, and another from a manuscript by Alice Bailey. [...] I did not even look at the Bailey material. The Nicoll pages intrigued me, and I thought of asking Seth about some of Nicoll’s ideas.

[...] Somehow, I begin a discussion of the Seth Material with them and go into a talk on physical reality and such, and discover that a few years ago, they had received some strange messages through Jane from ‘someone claiming to be a dead spirit.’ ‘But it was ridiculous,’ Jane says, ‘so we dropped it.’

[...] The episode is included in The Seth Material, but it was one of the strangest events of our lives.

Now, this is not dictation [on Seth’s own book], but it is some material that Ruburt can use in his dream book. [...]

2. At about the time Seth was producing his material on patterns for “Unknown” Reality, Jane was dealing with the same concept from her own much more personal viewpoint. [...]

3. See Seth’s material on his units of consciousness, or CU’s, in sessions 682–83 for Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality. In the 682nd session after 9:47, for example, he discussed relationships between CU’s and probable realities.

6. Much of Seth’s material in this session (and in this paragraph), along with his obviously intense feelings about what he was saying, reminded me of a group of sessions he gave well over a decade ago on the three creative dilemmas of All That Is. [...]

Those sessions, 426–28, were held in August 1964, and Jane presented excerpts from them in Chapter 18 of The Seth Material.

[...] See the 503rd session for September 24 for Seth’s comments re Jane’s relief at Prentice-Hall’s approval, through Tam Mossman, of Jane’s book on the Seth material. [...]

(Jane has been so busy finishing up the manuscript of her book on the Seth material, for Prentice-Hall, that we haven’t had a session since September 29.

(“What do you think of the book?” Jane sent the first 13 chapters of The Seth Material to the publisher Monday, October 13.)

(Before the session tonight I said I was curious about Seth’s interpretation of my dream of October 9. This will be given in the appropriate place in the text. Jane said that Seth was going to talk about the electromagnetic units discussed in the last session—she could “feel him buzzing around.”)

10. For some Seth material on suicide, see the first delivery for the 546th session, in Chapter 11 of Seth Speaks. In the 642nd session for Chapter 11 of Personal Reality, Seth mentioned that suicide can be “the result of passivity and distorted aggression, and of natural pathways of communication not used or understood.”

12. A note added later: I’m sorry to write that Seth didn’t discuss historical probabilities in the 736th session, or national counterparts either. I forgot to remind Jane of those topics before that session, just as I forgot to ask Seth about them while he was speaking. Several more sessions were held before I discovered the lapse, which occurred partly because I hadn’t typed the 735th session yet, and neglected to refer to my handwritten notes, and partly because in the meantime Seth had returned to his material on the families of consciousness. [...]

(Occasionally Seth will make this kind of correction in his material.)

5. In very gentle ways, Jane did eventually use some of Seth’s impressions relative to both people — but cast in her own vernacular — for Chapter 18 of Politics. In that chapter she also began presenting, again from her viewpoint, material on our house-hunting activities; she plans to continue doing so in subsequent chapters.

Early in this essay (which I began on May 7, 1982), I mentioned the series of sessions Seth gave in 1980 on his magical approach to reality, and the different approaches Jane and I took toward doing books on the subject. We were becoming so harried by her worsening physical symptoms when that material started to come through that she gave up working on Dreams and concentrated on those private sessions instead. [...] Then when Seth and Jane both came through with material on her sinful self (see Essay No. [...] Jane didn’t return to work on Dreams until July 1981, when the two blocks of sinful-self material had run their courses. [...]

Among the subjects not discussed so far are Seth’s (and our own) ideas on reincarnation, counterparts, probable realities, and Frameworks 1 and 2. Jane briefly referred to Seth’s “magical approach” material in her dictation last month (see her own session of April 16, 1982, in Essay No. [...] So as counterpoint to her writings on the sinful self, I’ll be presenting two excerpts to hint at what Seth does mean by his magical approach.

Aside from any books that he may produce himself (and on whatever subjects), I’ve already made plans to put together a short volume featuring Seth’s discussions on the magical approach to reality. A year earlier Jane had begun a much more ambitious project involving this material, as she mentioned on April 16, but she laid it aside for reasons already covered. My version will mainly feature the dozen or so sessions Seth gave in August—September 1980, and the poetry Jane was inspired to write because of them. She may also contribute an introduction to the book, showing how Seth’s and her own sinful-self information are related to the magical approach.

[...] During our work on these pieces Jane and I have automatically been led back to earlier material again and again, but each time we’ve tried to plunge deeper into the topic under discussion, to uncover new layers of meaning and insight. (Doing this always reminds us of additional points to cover, of course!) Putting it all together is an extremely challenging endeavor as I try to summarize our years of committment to the Seth material—for inevitably we end up dealing with ideas lying outside society’s generally accepted frameworks of belief. [...]

5. Seth’s concept of the moment point is implicit in his material as I quote it in Note 1 for this session. Also see the 514th session in Chapter 2 of Seth Speaks, and the 668th session in Chapter 19 of Personal Reality.

(Now Seth came through with half a page of material for Jane, then wound up the evening’s work with this joking comment:)

(Jane has often told me that usually on such nighttime occasions she doesn’t feel Seth’s presence or hear his voice. Instead she’s just aware of the material “running through her.”)

See also the 453rd session for December 4, 1968, in the Appendix of The Seth Material.

[...] Seth returned — and stayed longer, probably, than she’d anticipated he would. His material was for Jane, and grew out of the paper she wrote this afternoon on Eastern religious thought [see Appendix 15]. The more personal parts of Seth’s delivery aren’t given here, yet enough remains to show Jane’s main challenges some 11 years after she began speaking for him.

3. In Chapter 14 of The Seth Material, Jane and Seth gave a humorous-serious account of her out-of-body encounter with a demon, or “black thing,” of her own creation.

[...] Seth briefly mentions it in the excerpted material at the end of tonight’s session, with a promise to say more later.

[...] See my passage on naïve realism in Appendix 12, along with Seth’s own material on the question in Note 13 for that appendix.

(In earlier deleted material, Seth told us that Jane’s slower physical motions since the publication of The Seth Material was, in part, caused by her desire to slow down to give me a chance to catch up to her own success, etc., through my painting.)

(I connected my symptoms also with the creed, mentioned in the notes proceeding the undeleted material for this session. As stated this creed grew out of the last, 584th session for May 3, 1971, Seth Speaks, pages 321 and 322, where Seth discussed the ego’s fear of being swamped by strong creative abilities, etc. [...]

[...] Jane has already learned that she doesn’t want to do merely psychic, Seth books, like the Edgar Cayce series, for instance—from her own work on the creed. [...] It doesn’t really matter that the Seth material is excellent, etc. [...]

(This material is deleted from the 585th session for May 12, 1971. Here are a few details of my own cold-like symptoms which began on Tuesday night, May 4, and which Seth discusses below. [...]

[...] I consider my psychic experiences, the Seth sessions, and my entire relationship with Seth as a learning adventure—a continuing one. I think that the Seth Material contains insights and information concerning the nature of reality that are sorely needed. [...]

Naturally I do not claim that the material represents pure, undistorted knowledge. [...] After I signed the contract for this book, our friend Peg Gallagher was doing a story about Seth for the local paper, and she attended a session to get material. After several joking remarks to Peg (“Someday I will interview you”), Seth began speaking about distortions.

As Seth continues to explain the nature of perception, it becomes obvious that physical perception itself shapes reality into certain forms. [...] The Seth Material reveals what is beneath the normal reality that we know, but the very translation into words must necessarily distort the meaning.

As Seth Two says: “It is not that your being exists in a lesser reality. [...] I hope that this book and the Seth Material have given the reader some glimpse of his own multidimensional existence.

(Over two more pages of material for Patty followed. After that, with my right hand practically numb, I put my notebook aside and joined Patty and Seth in an impromptu discussion. Seth’s energy and vitality seemed to be inexhaustible — his pace even speeded up. [...]

[...] We met Patty in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in September, 1970, while we were on tour for Jane’s own book, The Seth Material.

(Patty enthusiastically told us that Seth’s material on the various stages of consciousness, in the 569th and 570th sessions in Chapter Seventeen, closely agreed with her recent studies. [...]

(A note: Patty read the late chapters of Seth’s book but Jane did not. The two of them discussed the material, though.)

(This material was given us by Seth at the end of the session for May 11/70 —the 527th; and is deleted from the regular record.

(There followed, here, two predictions related to Jane’s forthcoming book, The Seth Material. [...]

(“Good evening, Seth, and thank you very much. [...]

[...] She said she felt “something” go out to me from her body while Seth paused during his delivery... [...]

(Although this is a private session that Jane and I are filing separately from “regular” material, we’re also presenting it in Mass Events because of the many insights Seth offers into individual and mass events in general, and into our personal realities in particular. In fact, without those qualities of ours that Seth touches upon this evening, I doubt that the Seth books — indeed, even the sessions themselves — would exist. So in that sense this session contains more of those insights into the how and why of the Seth material that we’re always searching for. [...]

(Yet she easily agreed that this evening’s session, whether private or not, cast much light on the Seth material as a whole, adding depths of understanding and background information. [...]

[...] “But right now I’m just waiting,” she said impatiently at 9:40, after we’d been ready for Seth to come through since 9:25. [...] I want to be Seth or myself — one thing or the other, maybe….”

(“Good evening, Seth.”)

When I came to, I found myself scrawling what was obviously meant as the title of that odd batch of notes: The Physical Universe As Idea Construction. Later the Seth Material would develop those ideas, but I didn’t know that at the time. In one of the early sessions Seth said that this had been his first attempt to contact me. I only know that if I’d begun speaking for Seth that night, I would have been terrified.

Seth had a purpose, all right: to deliver the material he’s been giving us twice a week, now, like clockwork for the past five years. [...] While this was already our fourth session at the board, it was really our first Seth session.

On December 8, then, Seth introduced himself. [...] For this reason I’ll devote some space to the early sessions so that you can become acquainted with the material as Seth gave it, and see him emerge as a personality in his own right.

[...] I’m certain that the affair set off the emergence of my own unsuspected “psychic” abilities and acted as a trigger for the production of the Seth Material.

(Yesterday marked the beginning of Jane’s third week home from the hospital, and lately I’ve been trying to gently encourage her to begin a series of private sessions in an effort to learn what we can about the whole hospital-health-establishment belief system, and our part in it through and with the Seth material. I was eager to get Jane started on a program of self-therapy through the Seth material in order to help her counter—or at least supplement—the standard rigid medical framework we’ve been encountering for the last month, or since she went into the hospital on February 26, 1982. [...]

[...] Not Seth trances, by the way. [...] I have yet to type that material, but will start it after finishing this session.

(A note: Jane has mentioned several times since returning home that Seth may dictate a biography of her—presumably including her hospital experiences, etc. [...] “Every so often I get ideas about it,” she said, but not from Seth, at least yet.... [...]

[...] The arthritis diagnosis, Jane said, would be the only one the medical profession could offer, with its very limited insights and viewpoint—whereas Seth has insisted all along that she didn’t have arthritis per se. [...] Equally important, too was Seth’s idea that Jane no longer needed to try to be “the perfect self.” [...]

[...] They’re also interested in the Seth material. [...]

(It wasn’t until I was typing up these notes at 9 PM on the same day, that Jane realized she could have been in at least a light trance while giving the material; at first she thought she had not been, but then realized she retained only a hazy idea of the material’s content—just that it was optimistic. [...]

[...] Our Associate Editor, Mr. Charles Chintala, will be in touch with you soon regarding this material.

[...] Jane closed her eyes, concentrated, and gave the following material which is very nearly verbatim:

1. The Seth Material was published by Prentice-Hall, Inc. [...] Seth Speaks was published by Prentice-Hall in 1972 and by Amber–Allen Publishing/New World Library in 1994.

(Jane first mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Seth, her trance personality, would start another book of his own soon. [...] We hadn’t taken it very seriously, since we’d finished proofreading Seth’s first book, Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul,¹ only last month; certainly we weren’t prepared for the fact that he was quite capable of launching another such project so quickly. Nor did Jane have any conscious thoughts about subject matter, or a title, for any projected Seth book.

[...] Her impression stemmed from the way Seth had called his material an “essay” tonight — which is something he hasn’t done before. [...]

[...] Given her permission, Seth can come through very powerfully indeed. [...] By this I mean that when she speaks for Seth her voice drops in register, becomes somewhat stronger, and acquires Seth’s own deliberate but unique accent and rhythm. [...]

I was already beginning to study my own psychological behavior, though, and the question of Seth’s independent reality came more and more into my mind. Since I “become” Seth in some fashion, I’m never able to see myself as Seth in the way that Rob can, or that my students can in a class session, but I do know that he makes a definite impression on others. [...] What was there about Seth that so convinced him that Seth was more than a dissociated part of my own subconscious?

[...] After it, we knew that we were committed, and to us the session really marks the beginning of the Seth Material, the end of the preliminary data.

For nearly three hours I spoke for Seth, striding up and down the room, joking, pausing now and then for Rob to catch up with his notes, and delivering this monologue, using gestures and facial expressions, verbal expressions and inflections, entirely different from my own. I spoke steadily, without hesitation, breaking up serious philosophical material with jovial comments, much like a professor at a small seminar. [...]

When the material given above was finished, Seth stayed around, as if to emphasize an informal social period. [...]