“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Seth presented his sessions for “Unknown” Reality as usual, but dispensed with any chapter framework. He did group his material into six sections, though, with headings. As he told us in the 743rd session, a few days after the visit of Tam and his associate: “This book had no chapters [in order] to further disrupt your accepted notions of what a book should be. There are different kinds of organizations present, however, and in any given section of the book, several levels of consciousness are appealed to at once.” Seth gave no headings for individual sessions, so after each one as it’s listed in the Table of Contents (in each volume), Jane plans to insert a few words indicating at least some of the subjects discussed in that session.

Seth himself said nothing about publishing “Unknown” Reality in one volume, two volumes, or even more, while he was producing it. He referred to it as one unit until the very last session, the 744th, when he said in answer to a question I asked “The Seth material is endless. I organize it for your benefit. If you want to divide it into two volumes, that is fine. You will find several points where this can be done …” In our final view, however, the obvious point of division is also the best one: three sections in each volume. I’ll note a little more about this natural point of separation in the Epilogue of this book.

Since the sections themselves are of unequal length, for a while I contemplated trying a four-and-two division; but as Jane commented, “Three sections in one book are enough of a bite for the reader.” We do think most people will find it more convenient to have “Unknown” Reality presented, with indexes, in two shorter works, whether or not they’re of equal length. Volume 2 will be published a year or so after the first printing of Volume 1. After that initial waiting period, the two can always be read together.

We think now that “Unknown” Reality could continue for the rest of our lives, really. In other, larger respects, it could go on for centuries. For all we know in ordinary conscious-mind terms at this “time,” there could be a third volume to the set (as Jane herself speculated in the 730th session, in Section 6), and a fourth and fifth….

The next four paragraphs contain some information on our publishing schedule that I’ll present as simply as I can. Originally I hadn’t planned on dealing with such material in these notes, but after talking it over, Jane and I agreed that it should be given here after all. There are various titles, section numbers, and dates to keep in mind, so these passages may take some rereading.

As I note in the Epilogue for this volume, Section 6 in Volume 2 contains the story of how we moved into our “hill house,” just outside Elmira, N.Y., a month before Seth completed that section — and his part in “Unknown” Reality as a whole — in April, 1975. But in October, 1974, long before our move from the two apartments we occupied in downtown Elmira, Jane started her Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book; that book is the sequel to Adventures in Consciousness, and is to be published this Fall (in 1976) by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Politics is also mentioned in the Epilogue to Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality, and my first session notes on it show up in Section 4, in the second volume.

Every so often I’ve thought of averaging Jane’s dictation time for Seth Speaks and Personal Reality in the same way, but haven’t done so. I’m somewhat puzzled to note, however, that her very short working times for the Seth books seem to be either ignored or taken for granted by practically everyone — or, perhaps, those factors just aren’t understood in terms of ordinary linear time. Maybe I’m alone in my interest here, for even Jane doesn’t express any great curiosity about the time she has invested in the Seth material; she just delivers it. But given her abilities, I think her speed of production is a close physical approach to, or translation of, Seth’s idea that basically all exists at once — that really there is no time, and that the Seth books, for example, are “there” to be had in final form for just the tuning in. (In Section 3 of this volume, Note 2 for Session 692 contains information on another way by which we can move closer to Seth’s idea of simultaneity from our physical reality, but that method grows out of material not discussed here.)