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 that were not related to Seth, including The Afterdeath Journal of an American Philosopher, The Education of Oversoul Seven and Adventures in Consciousness.

The Seth Material

Jane Roberts was born in Saratoga Springs, New York, where she attended Skidmore College.

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.

Seth described himself as an "energy personality essence no longer focused in physical form" who was independent of Jane Roberts' subconscious, although Roberts herself expressed skepticism as to Seth's origins. Seth said that he had completed his earthly reincarnations and that he was speaking from an adjacent plane of existence. He described himself as an educator whose task was to impart the Material to the current generation of human beings. Unlike the tortured syntax of the Edgar Cayce readings, the Material is marked by modern diction and general lucidity. The Material discusses the nature of physical reality, the origins of the universe, the theory of evolution, the Christ story, the nature of God, and the purpose of life, among other subjects. With the exception of a weekly ESP class in which Seth spoke to class members, Roberts gave few readings to the public and was mostly focused on publishing the Material in printed form.

Much of the Seth Material is considered radical. For example, Seth contended that time and space are illusions and that both the past and future coexist with the present; that each person lives many lives simultaneously, rather than consecutively; and that each person creates his own circumstances and experiences within the shared earthly environment, similar to the doctrine of responsibility assumption. In an argument reminiscent of the "many worlds hypothesis", Seth said there are multiple realities, each as valid as any of the others.

Seth said that there is a God (whom he referred to as "All That Is"), that God is composed of self-replicating and inexhaustible mental energy, and that God contains all of Creation within it. God is therefore a gestalt of all life, and it can be said that only one being exists in the universe (see Pantheism). Seth said that the mental energy of God permeates all of existence and is the building material for all beings and things. Thus, according to Seth, inanimate matter has life and consciousness.

According to Seth, at the time of Christ, the Christ entity reincarnated as three individuals -- John the Baptist, Jesus and an individual named Paul or Saul (Seth did not say if this was the Apostle Paul) -- and each was aware of his role in founding a new religion. Seth said that Jesus was not crucified; rather, a deluded surrogate was substituted in his place, and it was this surrogate that Judas supposedly betrayed. According to Seth, Paul will reincarnate in the mid-21st century to correct mistakes that set Christianity on the wrong course, and a new period of spiritual awareness will ensue.

Jane Roberts died in 1984 at the age of 55 after a long battle with what appeared to be an autoimmune disease. Since Seth asserted that each individual "creates his own reality", Roberts' illness and premature death are considered by some to cast doubt on the validity of Seth's teachings.

In 1996, sessions 1 through 510 (the "early sessions" which preceded the dictation of the Seth books) were published posthumously by Robert Butts in nine volumes, along with six volumes of previously unpublished personal messages which accompanied the later sessions. Roberts' and Butts' manuscripts, notes and recordings were donated to the Harvard Library. Robert Butts currently lives in Sayre, Pennsylvania.

Non-channeled books

Jane Roberts wrote a number of books not dictated by Seth, which discuss the same ideas and how they affected her life. These are, among others, Adventures in Consciousness, Psychic Politics, The God of Jane, The Education of Oversoul Seven, The Further Education of Oversoul Seven, and Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time.

In addition she wrote poetry, short stories and novels.

Quotations from Seth

• "Nothing exists - neither rock, mineral, plant, animal or air - that is not filled with consciousness of its own kind. So you stand amid a constant vital commotion, a gestalt of aware energy, and you are yourselves physically composed of conscious cells that carry within themselves the realization of their own identity, that cooperate willingly to form the corporeal structure that is your physical body", Seth/Jane Roberts.
• "You create your reality according to your beliefs and expectations, therefore you should examine these carefully. If you do not like some aspect of your world, then examine your own expectations", Seth/Jane Roberts
• "Do not personally give any more conscious consideration"..."to events that you do not want to happen. Any such concentration, to whatever degree, ties you in with those probabilities, so concentrate upon what you want...", Seth's 891st session.

Quotations from Jane Roberts, not dictated by Seth

• "What we need is a whole new myth of man and his beginnings, one that leapfrogs local gods and places God inside his creatures, within creation. We need a god as blessed or flawed as its creations, a whole new cosmology giving birth to a God that is male and female, Jew, Arab, American, Chinese, Indian; that is within each individual alike; that is not parochial and not man's alone; a god that is within stones and stars; a god-goddess big enough to be personified as a Buddha, Christ, Isis, Athena, Muhammed-animal god, insect god, tree god; each seen as a local symbol standing for an unexplainable reality that is too super-real to fit our definitions. We need a new myth, imaginative and creative enough to leap above our puny facts. What boldness, to create a new race of the gods, glorifying individuality, seeing each as a unique personification-not sterile righteous lords sending down condemnations and handing out impossible edicts, but gods saying "Life is good. That's why we're alive, and alive in you!" We need father, mother, grandfather, grandmother gods, niece and nephew gods, aunt and uncle gods- boisterous joyful divine families, mating among themselves and with us, singing of the beauty of the lovebed, appreciating the moments formed like solitary jewels from the vast necklace of infinity... The Book of the Gods- I'd like to write that, and The Book of the Universe, in which people-gods or god-people rise from nonphysical to physical life because they want to, because they dreamed in their solitary godhoods of green grasses and soft flesh and yearned to be born as men and women; flinging their godness into bodies joyfully, recklessly, come what may. And maybe, in between lives, they wander on the shores of inner rivers, planning their "future" lives with great excitement, creating them as a writer does his book, plotting crises and achievements, challenges and glories-then, once on earth again, changing the stories, making surprise endings, each character alive, remaking the plot; with each life forming a new dimension of actuality, providing greater knowledge of honor and love, and a new marriage of the soul with the seasons. For if the gods didn't love the evenings and the dawns, why would their creatures?" Jane Roberts, Psychic Politics

Selected writing

• Roberts, Jane (1974). The Nature of Personal Reality. Amber-Allen Publishing. ISBN 1-878424-06-8
• Roberts, Jane (1981). The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. Amber-Allen Publishing. ISBN 1-878424-21-1

Seth related works from other authors:

• Watkins, Susan M. (2005 and 2006). Conversations with Seth 25th Anniversary Edition, in two volumes. Moment Point Press. ISBNs 1-930491-05-0 and 1-930491-09-3

• Dahl, Lynda Madden (1995). Ten Thousand Whispers. Moment Point Press. ISBN 1-889964-06-9

• Stack, Rick (1988). Out-Of-Body Adventures. McGraw-Hill Companies. ISBN 0809245604

External references and links

• Watkins, Susan M., (November 1, 2000) , Speaking of Jane Roberts, Remembering the author of the Seth material, Moment Point Press ISBN 0-9661327-7-7

• Listing of Sterling Library in Yale #1090 "Jane Roberts Papers" The complete works and other unpublished from Jane Roberts and Seth are there stored to read and copy
• Complete list of Jane Roberts' published writing
• Seth Center Publisher of Roberts' non-book Seth sessions.
• A Seth online community and discussion group.
• Seth Network International. Inactive group.
• Oracle Insights' Seth Area - An introduction to the Seth material and Jane Roberts from a personal perspective.
• The Seth Pages - Dale Mann’s take on the Seth material, with an abundance of Seth quotes.
• The Seth Webring

1929 births | 1984 deaths | American spiritual writers | Channelled texts | Metaphysics | Metaphysics writers | New Age | Occult writers | Spiritual mediums

Jane Roberts