The Seth Material [Paperback]

Then that day in the library, my hand closed over a volume. I saw the title, shrugged, and checked it out. I had no idea of the ride I was about to embark upon.

At age 40, I was not totally unprepared for Seth. I had studied Rosicrucian monographs for nine years and, since my early twenties, had felt a keen interest in metaphysics and philosophy. Yet, I had always had a skepticism about mediums and seances and things ectoplasmic.

I began reading. I learned of the coming of Seth into the lives of Jane Roberts, and her husband Robert Butts. It was bemusing to follow the progress of two people who may well have been as skeptical as I. Well, how would you feel if suddenly some personality essence entity entered your body and proceeded to lecture? It's quite one thing to accept it in theory, but if it happened to me, I think it would scare me-well-witless.

I read on. I got past the mediumship thing and into the meat of the message. When I began to assimilate what Seth was saying, I no longer cared whether Ms. Roberts was getting the information from a disembodied spirit or her goldfish. The material, to me, was electrifying.

On one hand, it seemed hauntingly familiar. I found myself saying, "of course, that's how it must be!" And "yes, I seem to remember...." On the other hand, it took me a very long time to read The Seth Material (and every other Seth book). You don't speed read Seth! I would encounter a concept, read the paragraph over and over until I thought I understood it. Yet there was always a nagging feeling that I didn't, not completely, and I kept doing a Scarlett O'Hara: I'll think about it tomorrow.

All that was nearly thirty years ago. Since then I've purchased all of the Seth books and have read them many times. I will, as long as I continue to have a pulse, read them many times more. I once wrote to Robert Butts and told him that the Seth books were my easy answer to the question, what books would I take if shipwrecked. I only partially joke when I say they keep rewriting themselves between readings, offering more and more information as I become capable of comprehending it.

Has all this changed my life? Indeed! Once begun, the material became an inevitable path of study. It challenged, and often stripped away, many of my most ingrained beliefs, and expanded my consciousness so that my view of the world is forever altered. Did the Seth books offer a magic solution to all my problems? Of course not! Have they offered new insights on how to deal with them? Absolutely-but more as a by-product of what I consider to be the most fascinating, absorbing, and stimulating information on the nature of everything.

I find Seth to be fun. Like an early, beloved schoolteacher whose influence persists throughout our lives, Seth speaks with humor, compassion and patience. Seth is not a cult. Seth is not a religion. Seth does not proselytize. Seth teaches. If you start with The Seth Material-and I do recommend reading the books in the order in which they were written-there are more than a dozen more, each superb.

If I were asked to give a one-sentence description of all of Seth's material, I would quote my son who was brought up on it: "It's the highest distillation of common sense."