Jane
Roberts
Jane Roberts (1929-1984) was an American author, poet
and psychic. She is best known as a trance medium
who "channelled" an "entity" named Seth. The publication
of the Seth texts established her as one of the preeminent
figures in the world of paranormal phenomena. She
was also an author of short stories, novels, children's
literature, and metaphysical texts unrelated to Seth,
including The Afterdeath Journal of an American Philosopher,
The Education of Oversoul Seven and Adventures in
Consciousness. In late 1963, Jane Roberts and her
husband, Robert Butts, experimented with a Ouija board
as part of Roberts' research for a book on ESP.
According to Roberts and Butts, on December 2, 1963
they began to receive coherent messages from a personality
who eventually identified himself as Seth. Within
weeks, Roberts began to hear the messages in her head
and to dictate them, and the use of the Ouija board
was eventually abandoned. For 21 years until Roberts'
death in 1984 (with a one-year hiatus due to her final
illness) Roberts held regular sessions in which she
went into a trance and channelled messages from Seth.
Butts served as stenographer, taking the messages
down in homemade shorthand, although some sessions
were recorded. These messages from Seth, consisting
mostly of monologues on a wide variety of topics,
are collectively known as the "Seth Material". The
Material through 1969 was published in summary form
in The Seth Material, which was written by Jane Roberts
with substantial excerpts from Seth.
Beginning with the 511th session in January, 1970,
Seth began to dictate his own books through Roberts.
This series of "Seth books" eventually totalled nine
volumes, although the last two books appear to be
incomplete due to Roberts' illness. The list of titles
includes Seth Speaks; The Nature of Personal Reality;
The Nature of the Psyche, Its Human Expression; The
Individual and the Nature of Mass Events; The Unknown
Reality; and Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment.
Robert Butts contributed notes and comments to all
the Seth books, and thus he was a co-author on all
of them.
|
|
|
