“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] They are not reformers in the strictest sense, yet their playful work does often end up reforming a society or culture. [...] Others might build social structures from their work, for example, but the Sumari themselves, while pleased, will usually not be able to feel any intuitive sense of belonging with any structured group.²

[...] Yet if our work is to ever result in social changes of any kind, those changes will have to be carried through by others, for primarily Jane and I work alone.

[...] When they do so appear, their work may set a spark that brings about changes, but they seldom take joint political action. [...]

[...] Psychically speaking, the Sumari often very nicely arrange existences in which they are a minority — in a democracy, say, so that they can work at their art within a fairly stable political situation. [...]

[...] During the period that Seth was dictating this book, Rob was typing the two volumes of Seth’s previous work, The “Unknown” Reality, and adding innumerable notes that correlated Seth’s material with that of his earlier books. I knew that on session nights, Rob “lost” his work time on that project, and he still had to type up the latest book session on the following day, while all I had to do was … what? [...]

Rob typed Seth’s other books, Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul, The Nature of Personal Reality, and the two volumes of The “Unknown” Reality, added his own notes, and did almost all the work of preparing them for publication. He was still working on The “Unknown” Reality when Seth finished this present book. [...]

[...] My own interest in art and Rob’s appreciation of Cézanne’s works helped trigger the Cézanne book, for example; and my own curiosity about William James and Rob’s appreciation of his work helped bring about the James manuscript.

[...] Most people, however, don’t realize the time or work required to keep up with Seth’s seemingly endless creativity: the sessions to be typed, the various stages of manuscript preparation, or the simple persistence necessary, so that the sessions continue despite life’s normal distractions.

[...] I left the house for work. Sometimes I drive to work by different routes, for variety. [...]

It would help if he let himself go in the same way that he does when he works on his poetry. [...]

[...] Any such effects however will happen within the framework of our sessions, and we must always work in an atmosphere of mutual integrity.

[...] I was on a side street, two blocks from the printing plant where I work. [...]

For example: You were pleased, Joseph, with the portrait you did and showed Ruburt, remarking, however, that you wished you had done such work earlier, and on other occasions you have made similar remarks. You will compare your own life and work often in a critical fashion to artists who were obsessed with one art from the beginning of their lives, or who pursued what is really a kind of straight and undeviating course—a brave courageous one, perhaps, and highly focused, but one that must be in certain respects (underlined) limited in scope and complexity, not crossing any barriers except those that seem to occur strictly within painting’s realm itself (all intently. [...]

[...] She’d done some excellent notes for her third essay for her book of poetry today, though she hadn’t worked at it as much as in other recent days. [...]

[...] Part of your accomplishment lies in our sessions and your own considerable work with the notes, and with the invisible aura contained in those notes, for there in a different way you are painting a portrait—a portrait of two lives from a highly individualistic standpoint, extremely unique—and that is the kind of experience that would be ripped out of your life’s fabric, were you the hypothetical idealized version with whom you sometimes relate—a version highly romanticized, let me add. [...]

[...] He tries to view his own work through some idealized image of a psyche who is as gifted as he is as a writer, and also highly gifted in meeting the public, putting on performances, acting as a healer, as a prophet, and as an expert therapist all at once, and in so doing his own characteristics and natural abilities and inclinations become lost along the way. [...]

[...] I know I determined to get money and through my work—so we could work—(while seeing to it that I could drop jobs); and started the anxieties and body habits which then... [...]

Worked well, James. [...]

(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. No sooner had she left than Tam arrived, two days later, bringing with him the copyedited manuscript² of Seven Two for us to check; on the 20th, our work completed on it, I sent it back to him at Prentice-Hall. We received the printer’s sample pages for Seven Two on December 4 [we see these for each book, and they show us just how the work will look when published]. [...]

(Although each of us had looked over Mass Events occasionally, still it seemed strange to hear Seth come through with new material for it after all of that time had passed, and equally strange to resume work on these notes. [...] Tam Mossman did visit later that month, and at his urging Jane did go back to work on Seven Two with her old enthusiasm.

[...] Jane completed Seven Two in August, and set to work preparing the manuscript for Tam. 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. [...]

[...] During it Seth remarked that he’d “begin book sessions again next Wednesday,” but that didn’t quite work out; he still had a few more nonbook sessions to go. Jane has been looking over his material on Mass Events every so often lately, though, with the idea of going back to work on it. [...]

I began thinking about and working upon this Introduction for Seth, Dreams … late in October 1985. [...] Sue published her two-volume work, Conversations With Seth, in 1980-81; her father died two years later. I’ve already referred to Laurel Lee Davies, the young lady who now works with me (and is helping especially with proofreading and answering mail). [...]

[...] I was obligated to spend many months finishing a Seth book — Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment — that we had started way back in September 1979, long before she went into the hospital; as I had planned to, I resumed work on that project the day after she died. (Jane was cremated the next day, in a process we had agreed upon several years ago.) I also worked upon two other books we collaborated upon after she had been hospitalized. [...]

As soon as I took Jim Young up on his word that I could make whatever statement I want to about Jane’s work, I knew that this Preface would contain relatively little about Seth, Dreams and Projection of Consciousness itself, and I wrote to Jim about this. [...] These notes, then, will contain material not only about Jane, but my own involvement with her, her work, and her death. [...]

‘I went back to work on a long-overdue Seth book the next day, but don’t let my determination to carry on Jane’s work fool you. [...]

[...] The last significant ghost images are being met head-on, symbolically, and conquered; this being given reinforcement in the physical universe because of the very physical work involved.

Now these changes have taken work, energy and time. [...]

[...] You are, I believe (meaning me) about ready for a new breakthrough in your own work, and the boy’s visit may bring this about more quickly.

[...] The writing at night provides constructive outlet, you see, for any lingering conflicts of this nature, and is his way of triumphing over them in work.

[...] I make him work hard because he has the ability and is working. [...]

[...] I demand that you work. [...] And work out the relationship that exists in your immediate families. [...]

[...] They are working very hard. [...]

[...] I need and needed an intellect through which I could work so that our basic principles could be understood by those who were intellectually inclined. [...]

[...] Like Jane, she works out with yoga each day, but rushes the exercises in the morning while dressing for work. [...]

[...] Jane and I usually go out of our way to avoid them because of the extra work involved, etc. [...]

[...] I told him the lighting was flattering, but Bill insisted there was a different quality in the work, and that he did not believe it was due solely to suggestion.

[...] Hence Bill’s feeling of an extra quality of life in the work. [...]

He works out many problems through his work. [...] If he insists upon four to five hours a day of definite work, many of his problems will be solved at an intuitive level by him. [...]

[...] This evening we worked with the pendulum and began to appreciate the reasons involved.

[...] He should not read and reread endlessly notes that he has made, for as he begins to work he will find himself writing.

The daily working methods allow for the natural and periodic use and release of both aspects of the personality. [...]

[...] Both of us ended up out of work. [...] A “coincidence,” of course, that my work for Ed ended at the same time Jane told him that she and Walt had amicably agreed to part. Ed talked about moving with his family to New Paltz, a small community about 110 miles south, near the Hudson River; he might find commercial work there with a friend. [...]

[...] I designed greeting cards for a nationally known company, and was to work there off and on for several years. Jane worked part-time as a secretary for Elmira’s Arnot Art Museum, and wrote two unpublished novels—and one that did sell. [...] Without judging the other author’s work, she just didn’t want to share her first book with anyone else.

[...] I know I’m in good company with the many who have been and who are nourished by their works. [...] Without conceit, I also feel that the works, the ideas, of those three are in their own ways reminiscent of the Seth material. [...]

My goal, then, has come to be the publishing of all of Jane’s work, or at least as much of it as I can, including not only the Seth material but her poetry and fiction and notes and journals—to finally be able to offer it as a great whole for study in what we call the “future.” [...] Sometimes I think I’m a slow learner: It took me a while to realize, for example, that the responses to the Seth material by mail and in person—and now electronically—are actually myriad extensions of that work, showing in all of their varieties the questions and answers it’s raised and the beneficial effects it’s had on the many who have communicated since Jane held her first real session on December 2, 1963—and on those who still do. [...]

[...] When he’d done so later in the afternoon, he further offered to do the necessary work here at the house, saving Jane going to his office. [...]

[...] In many ways, we found the situation to be quite similar to that involving the recent visits of Carol and Fred, from Canada, and of Hal and Rusty, from Lancaster, Pennsylvania—in that it seemed the necessary inner workings to bring about the ideal situation had been carried out in Framework 2. More on this can be added in later sessions. [...]

Your psychic work has given both of your lives an impetus, direction, challenge, and opportunities for accomplishment that in certain terms at least would otherwise be lacking.

It is easy perhaps at times to have regrets, to wish that curiosity, the love of learning, the desire for knowledge, and yearning to help your fellow men (was Seth a bit amused here?) had not gone quite so far, and to imagine that had it not Ruburt would be in excellent physical condition, and no one would miss the work that then would not exist.

Now here you became involved in teamwork, learning how to work cooperatively, closely, with another individual. [...] The two of you then worked together.

[...] When you work with tables, work with those who are experienced in such things...

[...] The very beginning of the session is not recorded because I was working in the studio in the back of the apartment when Seth came through as Jane, Eve and Tam sat in the living room.

I do not suggest now that you work with tables alone. [...]

Ruburt’s creative work is highly spontaneous. [...] He is very impatient at the work involved in inserting it into time. [...]

[...] When you are writing you are pleased, finally at least, with the working of your mind—but angry that you are not painting. [...]

Physical exercise becomes the area between, taking you from both your painting and writing, and furthermore is a reminder, an angry one, that the physical working area—the chores—are largely yours to do.

Ruburt emulates your own work habits, and tries to regulate his creative life so that it bears a resemblance to yours. [...]

(A couple of days ago Jane received from Tam a letter written to Tam by Saul Cohen, the editor at Prentice-Hall who’s evidently been assigned to shepherd Jane’s work through production. [Tam is still her regular editor.] In the letter Cohen had good things to say about her work, and the chances that Prentice-Hall will publish Seven III, the first five chapters of which Tam has forwarded to Prentice-Hall. [...]

Now so is our work birth of a different kind, quite as natural. [...] You are involved with work and lives that are your own. [...]

(I’d meant to write up a more detailed account of what is really an interesting case, but had become sidetracked by the Fred Conyers experience, work, and other things to do. [...]

[...] It then became evident that a lot of her poor feelings lately have been connected to worries over work, what Prentice-Hall would or wouldn’t publish, etc.—an old reaction that I should have been more prepared for, I guess, but had lost sight of in our day-to-day hassles. [...]

[...] He worked, or allowed me to work through, the layers of personal subconscious only, which now and then may yield valid information, but highly distorted as a rule, and unreliable for our purposes.

[...] This is why I worked so well with Philip, to make the most of the opportunity while we did have a guest.

[...] On the other hand again, such experience is necessary and quite valid, and should be accepted certainly as a part of our work.

[...] We shall see if you can work out others by yourselves.

[...] In this one Seth for the first time mentioned that Jane should work full time at her writing. [...] By the end of September she had left the gallery where she had worked part time four years. [...] Since leaving the gallery and buckling down to work, Jane had received many very favorable letters from publishers. Invariably they comment on the much improved quality of her work. This improvement has seemed to blossom like magic, and we feel that the time when Jane begins to sell her work regularly will soon arrive.)

[...] In recent weeks alone, my work has improved remarkably; I am objective enough about it to be able to see this. [...] At times while working recently, I have had an almost magical ability to achieve whatever it was I wanted to do.)

[...] By agreement we park so as not to block each other’s automobile comings and goings, and the system works well. [...] Going downstairs after breakfast, I saw the car was gone, which meant my neighbor had moved it considerably earlier than is usually his habit, since he leaves for work sometime after I do.

Such results are also now showing in your own work. [...]

Now when you think of problems such as you have been discussing here this evening, concentrate, Joseph, upon probable solutions, and imagine the solutions that can be worked out. [...]

For many reasons at various periods in your time there has been particular work to be done requiring numbers, a broad stratum, a physical pool, that would serve as a basis for future generations. [...]

There is something about a product that is overestimated, and legal difficulties that will be taken against the company, for which you have been asked or will be asked, to work.

([John:] “Another company I will work for?”)

[...] Obviously, it didn’t work right the first two times—just before lunch at about 1:50, then after lunch at about 2:30. [...]

[...] I heard her exclaim over the feat at the time, without paying a lot of attention, since I’d shoved my chair back into a corner to get out of the way while the staff worked on Jane; I was doing mail. [...]

[...] I work on mail, and the heating man comes.

[...] She said both her arms are working better, and that the web of skin between the thumb and the fingers, and between each finger, on her left hand, has softened considerably. [...]