(After we talked for a few more minutes, Jane said, “I’ve got the feeling you’re going to get answers to your questions about psychology — but they’ll be presented as the Preface to this book. “We hadn’t given the idea of a preface a thought. Making a joke, I asked Jane what was coming up next in the session. I meant generally, but she replied, “The Preface.” Even then, I don’t think either of us expected Seth to carry out such a project tonight. But as he came through at 10:57:)

(“All right. Thank you, Seth. Good night,” I said at 12:01 A.M. and Seth was gone almost at once. See the Preface at the beginning of this book. Jane said that although Seth hadn’t actually considered my specific questions about psychology after all, they had served as an impetus for the Preface. She felt good. I read the Preface to her — and she felt even better.

Now: Preface: There is an “unknown” reality, in quotes as given. I am part of it and so are you …

(Seth finished at midnight. Jovially:) End of Preface.

(The circumstances surrounding Jane’s delivery of Seth’s Preface, while she was in trance, are given in the 685th session for February 25, 1974, in Section 1. After a break midway through the session, Seth began the material below at 10:57 P.M. He always indicates each word, phrase, or sentence to be underlined. [...]

Now: Preface: There is an “unknown” reality, in quotes as given. [...]

(Jovially:) End of Preface.

NOTES: PREFACE BY SETH

I’m caught between writing these notes and continuing with my preface or whatever for James, which is coming along great; but guess this is more important right now. [...]

Stopped writing these notes; getting some more good ideas for my preface— but the good feelings in my leg and foot continue; I want to call out to Rob and tell him, but feel constraint; he’s working on Unknown; I’ll disturb him ... [...]

10:30–10:50: Very good start James preface.

[...] Am working on preface though. [...]

[...] Now she was nervous, for she felt that Seth was ready to dictate his Preface for Dreams.

Preface: This book will be my most ambitious project thus far. [...]

(9:47.) End of Preface. [...]

[...] See the notes at the end of Seth’s Preface, which we received as the 609th session on April 10, 1972.

(The first session in the Preface for Volume 1 of Dreams is a private one that Jane delivered on September 13, 1979. [...]

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. [...]

In the Preface for Dreams I mentioned Jane’s idea for a second book of poetry. [...]

In the Preface I also wrote about how I thought the great blossomings of religious consciousness and scientific consciousness engendered by the events at Three Mile Island and Jonestown/Iran would continue to grow, once born, seemingly with lives of their own. [...]

Please title what we have done this evening as my preface. [...]

PREFACE BY SETH

[...] See the notes prefacing the 653rd session for April 4, in Chapter Thirteen, describing how she gave birth to the original long Speaker poem while in an altered state of consciousness. [...]

[...] With all of this activity, I’ve managed to get in just one-and-one-half hours of work on the preface for Dreams, during the last three days. [...]

5. Much of Seth’s material in the Preface and the 683rd session applies here.

I would like to preface my remarks by mentioning that you are both in excellent psychic and physical condition at this point, and at your best level of achievement, indeed maintaining a balance that neither of you had been able to achieve earlier.

[...] And with this material as a preface I will begin with a brief explanation of the Frank Watts material.

(Seth actually began his Preface for this book, Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment, with the next, 881st session, which Jane delivered for him 12 days later [on September 25]. [...]

[...] Rather, after indicating in this Preface the continuity between the two books, I’ll discuss briefly a few other subjects we feel deeply about. [...]

Enjoying the sounds of life in the mysterious nighttime, I intuitively understood that not only did I want to mention in this Preface the feelings Jane and I have about Three Mile Island as a technological and scientific entity, embodying man’s attempts to extract new forms of energy [and yes, consciousness, in our joint opinion] from the far more basic and profound quality Seth calls All That Is; I also knew that I wanted to indicate how the very idea of nuclear energy, as an attribute of a national focus, compared with the situation in the Middle Eastern country of Iran. [...]

Now here is the private session listed at the beginning of these advance notes—the one I chose to present just before Seth’s actual Preface for Dreams. [...]

[...] (Long pause.) Therefore, again, I express satisfaction with the essays and preface and work you have already completed. [...]

[...] I felt guilty at leaving her alone while I worked on the preface notes for Dreams after supper. [...]

Seth’s Preface is in Volume 1, of course, and it too should be studied again; to me, such acts of referral between the two volumes help the reader mentally unite them.

[...] 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.

Now these quotations are from Seth’s Preface (for Volume 1):

[...] Because of her concentration on that hook she hasn’t done much on her book of poetry, If We Live Again, since late February; and as I mentioned in the Preface for Dreams, she laid aside her third Seven novel, Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time, in May 1979 when she began God of Jane. [...]

3. See the Preface for Dreams. In the notes immediately preceding the private session for September 13, 1979, I quoted some of the very evocative material on animal cultures and civilizations that Seth had given in Chapter 5 of Mass Events.

PREFACE