The Pioneering Work of Author and Channeler Jane Roberts: The Seth Material

Many people involved in the newly-emerging spiritual movement (sometimes referred to as the Human Potential Movement) of the '70's found a new avatar in the form of "Seth", an entity not bound by the physical laws of time and space, who spoke through the medium Jane Roberts. Seth referred to himself as an "energy personality essence no longer focused in physical form". Roberts recounted in the introduction to the first book dictated by Seth, Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul, how she underwent her own psychic initiation that gradually allowed this spirit entity to speak through her. This began with an out-of-body experience in 1963 when she was writing poetry, resulting in a script produced by automatic writing that was entitled The Physical Universe as Idea Construction. This text was very similar in content to much of the Seth material; it seemed to outline, in advance, the ideas that would be elaborated upon when he began speaking through her more freely.

Jane Roberts discussed how neither she nor her husband, Robert Butts, had had any kind of psychic background prior to this. The author spent a long period of time soul-searching and questioning her own beliefs in regards to this phenomenon she could not explain. At the worst of times, she feared that she might be schizophrenic. But the persistence of Seth's friendly overtures, and other uncanny synchronicities that occured in her life to echo the psychic material, eventually won out over her fears.

Thus began an unprecedented creative partnership in the late '60's. The sessions took a typical course: Jane would become aware of Seth's presence and soon pass into a trance state; Seth would dictate hia material and Robert would write it down and later edit it. Robert Butts later described how the sessions were actually very spontaneous and Seth's delivery was anything but stale. He could be, by turns, humorous, sympathetic, challenging, and emphatic.