“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Beginning in June 1974, then, while writing notes and appendixes for Volume 1 of “Unknown”, and taking Seth’s dictation for Volume 2, I spent eight months producing the art work for Jane’s Adventures in Consciousness and for her book of poetry, Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time; I finished all of those drawings in January 1975. In the meantime Jane completed Adventures in August 1974, and started Psychic Politics that October. In March 1975 we took time out to move from the apartment house in downtown Elmira to our “hill house” just outside the city. Jane finished dictating Volume 2 of “Unknown” for Seth in April 1975, and I started my notes and appendixes for it. In July 1975 Seth began The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression, and in December of that year Jane initiated work on her own The World View of Paul Cézanne: A Psychic Interpretation. She finished Politics in February 1976, and Cézanne in September; Politics was published that September also. I completed my own writing for Volume 1 of “Unknown” in October. Our 16-year-old cat, Willy, died early in November, and two days later we obtained a kitten, Willy Two (or Billy, as we soon came to call him), from an area humane society. I finished typing the manuscript for Volume 1 late in November, spent December checking it, and mailed it to Prentice-Hall early in January 1977.

(I’ll preface the workaday notes for the first session of Mass Events with the following comments, just to briefly summarize the lifetime endeavor that my wife, Jane Roberts, and I are involved in with the Seth books. Seth is a highly creative “energy personality essence,” as he calls himself, who speaks through Jane while she’s in a trance or dissociated state. These notes, then, are written shortly after Seth finished dictating Mass Events in August 1979. I’ve discussed some of the same points while introducing earlier books in the series, of course, although on each occasion I did so in a different way for variety’s sake. At the same time, Jane and I want each book to be complete in itself, so that the “new” reader can begin to understand what’s happening from the very beginning. Details about some of the subjects I’ll mention here can emerge as this book proceeds, or others are referred to. And these notes will also free Jane to deal with other matters in her Introduction for Mass Events.

(I also think that Seth himself could have some pretty funny things to say here to Jane and me — some day I’ll ask him — words with which he’d humorously caution us not to take the whole affair too seriously, to leave room in our daily lives for the simple, uninhibited joy of creative expression and living even while we study his unending outpouring of material. But maintaining such a balance isn’t always easy. Seth has already offered Jane encouragement twice since he finished his part of the work for Mass Events in August 1979. He came through with the following quotations when Jane began to express a renewed concern about her responsibility for his material, and for the reactions of others to it. Her feelings had arisen in large part because of the ever-increasing mail response the Seth books have generated. Interesting, then, the way the Seth portion of Jane’s personality structure [whatever Seth’s reality may be] reinforces those other portions that are meeting all of the challenges embodied in her current mental and physical existence — and we are continually seeking to learn more about how Seth is able to do this. In these excerpts Seth also touches upon certain other points that we think of often.

(And now for the notes I wrote in April 1977, opening the first session for Mass Events. Although I’ve added to my notes for Seth’s book since he finished dictating it, I’ve done so very briefly in order to keep them as contemporary as possible.)

[...] I wrote in the Introductory Notes for Volume 1 that Jane began delivering “Unknown” Reality (as we soon came to call it) in the 679th session for February 4, 1974, and finished it with the 744th session for April 23, 1975. [...]

[...] This process can also result in a similar approach on my part when I discuss his dictation, so I’ll initiate a summary of Volume 1 by using four sources presented by Seth himself: a key passage from his Preface; the headings he gave for the three sections that comprise Volume 1, along with a few elaborations of my own; a brief description of the appendixes which I assembled over a period of time; and a passage from the 762nd session, in which, eight months after he’d finished “Unknown” Reality, Seth speaks further about his purposes in producing it.

[...] Yet when I am finished, I hope you will discover that the known reality is even more precious, more ‘real,’ because you will find it illuminated both within and without by the rich fabric of an ‘unknown’ reality now seen emerging from the most intimate portions of daily life…. [...]

[...] I quoted that statement in Volume 1’s Epilogue, and now, after finishing my own work on the entire manuscript, I realize how truly apropos it is.

A point: the answer does not lie for example in deciding not to finish my book (Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment). You are free to finish my book or not as you prefer, but not to finish it thinking that such an action will help solve your difficulties would not work. [...]

[...] It came to seem to me that finishing this latest book would only be more of the same, with the same attitudes and beliefs behind it—hence, how could it help? I never told Jane, for example, to not finish the book. [...] Even so, it will be a long while before said volume is finished, let alone ready for the press. [...]

[...] I’m just finishing typing last Monday’s session, the first in our new series, but already I think the program has helped her.

[...] Jane finished her cigarette and I worked on mail.

[...] She resumed at 4:19, and finished the session, doing better at the end.

[...] I’m finishing typing this session now at 8:15 p.m., preparatory to going across Pinnacle Road. [...]

[...] To finish the painting which you have begun . You would like to have it finished to take to New York. [...]

(“Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” I asked my wife when she’d finished. [...]

(I’d brought in Chapter 6 of Dreams, which I’d finished typing this morning, and ended up reading the whole thing to Jane except for a couple of notes. [...]

(It was so late when I finished reading Chapter 6 to her that Jane wasn’t planning on a session today, until I told her it was okay with me.)

[...] In the Preliminary Notes for the session I wrote that Seth had finished dictating Mass Events a month ago [in the 873rd session for August 15, to be exact], and that a week later I began finishing my own notes for the book. [...]

[...] Then I’ll need another week to go over the manuscript, with colored pens marking instructions of each page as to what copy we want set in roman [upright] type, and in italics; while doing that I’ll also check spelling, punctuation, references, dates, times—all of those mundane details so necessary in helping our publisher produce a finished, good-looking book for the marketplace.¹

[...] She also thought of giving me the night off, by way of celebrating a bit because I’ve finished the notes for Mass Events, but I told her I’d rather keep the sessions going as long as both of us feel like it. [...]

1. I also kept track of Jane’s progress as she wrote the Introduction for Mass Events. She finished that excellent piece of work seven months ago—a few days before she delivered the first formal session for the Preface to Dreams, the 881st, on September 25, 1979. [...]

(I took the lunch tray out to the cart after Jane was finished, and met Marilyn Sullivan, who introduced herself to me. [...]

[...] She finished at 3:45 after quite a struggle. [...]

[...] The others you ignore, and when the picture is finished that you want, then looking back you can see how the completed picture completely obscured the other possible ones, so that they disappeared entirely in the completed project. [...]

I began this piece soon after finishing the Introductory Notes for Volume 1 in the summer of 1976.

[...] Seth finished his part of the second volume over a year ago, and since then I’ve carefully gone over my original notes for it; I’ve rewritten almost all of them (often many times) in an effort to get them just right, in my view. [...]

Section 6 also contains the story of how Jane and I searched for the “hill house” we bought and moved into before the last section of “Unknown” Reality was finished. [...]

Afternoon: A strange moment suddenly comes; we’ve just finished lunch. Frank Longwell just went out back again, to finish working; the huge yellow back-hoe moves outside the kitchen window; the air suddenly turns dark; the sun disappears; an odd cast of light covers everything; stormy, evocative. [...]

[...] I hadn’t asked her to do a song for this last essay; she told me afterward that she hadn’t realized I was that close to finishing it. [...]

[...] She wrote down the translation as soon as she finished the song. [...]

[...] A young man had finished reading The Seth Material this evening. He had many questions — and was too impatient to finish the letter to Jane that he’d just started. [...]

Jane finished Dialogues last year (in March 1973), and now (in June 1974) is halfway through the final draft of Adventures. I’m to finish illustrations for each of them by the end of this year, if possible, since Prentice-Hall will publish both books in 1975. [...]

[...] In it Seth gave the heading for Section 4, just before finishing his evening’s work with a few minutes of personal information for Jane and me. [...]

[...] You think that evolution is finished. [...]

[...] You’ll need time to finish the notes and do all that typing….”¹)

[...] I could see that Jane was not only sad that the long project was finished for her, but uneasy, too; she was suddenly set loose, released from a framework that had come to be very familiar over the last 14½ months. [...]

(“3. I suppose it’s quite evident why you finished ‘Unknown’ Reality right after we moved into our ‘new’ house, but will you reassure Jane by commenting on this, and on future works?”

[...] I wish there was some way each book could be turned into print instantly, so that we could go on to the next one … I can’t help it — every time Seth finishes a book I feel like crying.”

[...] That you form the universe as you know it en masse and individually from the focal point of this moment, from the focus of this moment that all of your selves exist now and are not done and finished anymore than you are done and finished. (Very loudly) And anymore than I am done and finished. [...]

[...] Later in July Sue finished typing the notes and started in on the appendixes for Volume 2, just as we received the first books for James. [...] Late that month — unbelievably to me — I finished my own work on Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality, and immediately began to type the final draft of the sessions; as I finished groups of sessions I mailed them to Tam every few days, while at the same time collaborating with Jane on the table of contents for the book. [...] Jane finished typing her manuscript for Seven Two on October 3, and I helped her correct that book for mailing on October 9. My own mailings for Volume 2 continued until the 21st of the month, when at last that very long project was completed and out of the house in its entirety for the first time. [...]

[...] I rechecked my opening notes for the last session: Yes, we did finish correcting the page proofs for James early in April 1978. [...]

[...] Even assuming that Seth will finish dictating Mass Events later this year [1979], Jane and I will still have too much work to do on it for publication in 1980.

(Resuming our chronology: On October 24, 1978, Jane worked out the Table of Contents for Seth’s Psyche, and started her Introduction for it on the 26th; we mailed Psyche to Tam in sections as we put the manuscript together, and finished with that endeavor on November 9. On November 14 Eleanor Friede visited us to renew an old friendship and to go over Emir with Jane. [...]

(Drawing in the air, Seth-Jane finished the list, then told me that I was to place a second one, with its own heading, opposite the first. [...]

(11:06 p.m. Seth was gone before I finished writing, after referring to some other work that Jane and I are doing on our own. [...]

[...] She finally finished it at 3:25.

[...] She was interrupted by people taking her vitals — temperature 98.3 — and finished the session finally at 4:20, after resting from reading several times.

In one reality, of course, the work was finished at the Foster Avenue house (in Elmira, New York). In another it was finished in Sayre (Pennsylvania).

In your reality, the “Unknown” Reality we have just finished is the only version of that manuscript. [...]

(11:01 P.M. And so Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality is finished. [...]

14. This final note is added well over a year after Jane finished delivering “Unknown” Reality. As I wrote at the start of the 740th session, Jane suspended ESP class on February 26, 1975, to give us time to not only prepare for our move to the hill house (in March), but to settle down afterward.

Seth, then, has finished his work on Dreams. I wrote the original version of the notes for each book session as he delivered it through Jane, and also began collecting other notes and reference material that might be used. Since I’ve completed the essays, all I have to do now is “refine” the session notes (and addenda) as I type the finished manuscript. [...]

[...] Shortly after finishing it, she went into the hospital. [...]

[...] I shoveled quite a bit of snow in the driveway last night after I finished typing yesterday’s session, and for the first time in a long while felt the old panic return. [...]

[...] I worked on mail while she finished at 3:14. [...]

[...] She finished well at 4:13.