Talk:Jane Roberts

Fair Use (please keep this note on top)

[Note: The quotes mentioned here have been moved to the Seth Material article, so this comment no longer applies to this article.] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Caleb Murdock (talk • contribs) 08:16, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

It is my belief that the quotes in this article are permitted by the Fair Use doctrine, since they serve as examples of the Seth Material and they explicate the statements made in the text. If you feel that the quoted material is too long, please respond here before deleting it. I believe, although I cannot know for certain, that the current owner of the Seth books, Robert Butts, would be pleased to see examples of the Seth Material given to the public. Mr. Butts is around 90 years old, and I am concerned about contacting him given his age. Furthermore, he may not understand what Wikipedia is all about. Nonetheless, if I believed that the quotes in this article exceeded the Fair Use standard, I would contact him.--Caleb Murdock (talk) 06:21, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Caleb, do you know where we go from here now that both members of the famous partnership have passed from this life? What agency or administration would oversee the works now? TaoPhoenix (talk) 05:35, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry that I haven't been keeping up with the discussion page. The Seth papers are at Yale, I think, and I assume his second wife has his later work. My understanding is that various individuals have Seth projects going of various kinds, but I don't know anything about them.-Caleb —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.161.224.112 (talk) 10:20, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Perfection

To 75.135.74.160. I don't remember Seth talking about perfection in relation to God, and I've read more than ten of the books. Indeed, I believe that Seth would say that perfection is a moot concept since everything is always in a state of becoming and nothing ever attains a final, perfect state. I suspect that this obsession with perfection is your "thing". I would appreciate it if you would find a cite in one of the books.

My second objection to your revisions is that they don't fit into the existing paragraph very well. Nonetheless, I've revised the paragraph to reflect your comments, using language which I think is a better fit.--Caleb Murdock 08:22, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Scientific Research on the Texts

I think leaving out reference to books exploring specific scientific validity and scientific parallels in Seth's theories of reality and matter (comparing them to David Bohm's theories of Wholeness and the Implicate Order) - I.E. Norman Friedman's 'Bridging Science and Spirit' and 'The Hidden Domain' - is a big oversight which needs to be corrected IMHO (and not meaning to sound critical). I don't consider myself well versed enough to write the addition and I thought it would be better to seek consensus before making any edits anyway (such as simply adding his books to the Seth-related book list). Of all the various channelers of the 19th and 20th century, Jane Roberts produced arguably the most intellectually and scientifically sophisticated material and it would be good to discuss, even if briefly, serious investigation into the material. Many of the tenets of the Seth books have been embraced sort of nonspecifically by the New Age movement (as well as other channelers, E.G. Abraham, Elias, and Kris (this also might be a useful addition - other channelers expanding on specific ideas proposed by Seth)) and it would be good to give people a link to further serious study of the claims that thoughts creating reality is backed up by Quantum Physics. Thank you for the time you've spent editting this valuable resource for people, it is much appreciated.R. Chappell (talk) 00:55, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

A note: Perhaps calling an omission of Normal Friedman's books a big oversight is a poor way to put it. Reviewing all of the edits and archives of discussions you've already gone through to perfect this page, I think it must be a seemingly insurmountable task to appease all of the people affected by the Seth books who care about the material and how this page is written. I think if someone was willing to write it, a brief paragraph on Norman Friedman's contentions that Seth's theories (which were written either approximately concurrently with or prior to the publishing of David Bohm's 'Wholeness and the Implicate Order' - 'Nature of Personal Reality' was published around the same year if I'm not mistaken) bear many similarities to David Bohm's work (a highly respected theoretical physicist). I am plenty versed in Seth's books but I do not feel adequately confident in my grasp of Quantum Physics to write an eloquent synopsis of Friedman's contentions. One of the reasons New Age material, like the "You Create Your own Reality" tenet - originating with Seth, gets mocked and not taken seriously is the fact that the New Age and Parapsychology movement does not have a peer review system and people who have a very amateur grasp of what they are talking about often get published (or interviewed by Oprah) right alongside the educated professionals, destroying professional credibility in the eyes of the scientific and academic establishments and furthering public opinion that all investigations into the paranormal are simply Pseudoscience. If you feel like adding to this page at some point, or if anyone with a good background wants to submit a trial paragraph on this, provided it meets your (Caleb's) approval, I think it would be a good thing.R. Chappell (talk) 02:31, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate your comments.

First of all, no one needs my approval to edit the article. That doesn't mean, of course, that I won't make my own changes if I don't like the new additions -- that's just the way it works on Wikipedia. I don't own this article, though I wish I did.

You have me at a significant disadvantage. I know very little about the rest of the New Age movement. Starting as a teenager, I read about (1) ghosts (reading plausible stories about ghosts was the first thing that made me realize that there is more to life than physical reality), (2) then moved on to Edgar Cayce, (3) and read some Castaneda/Don Juan, (4) then read about near-death experiences, and (5) then discovered Jane Roberts/Seth. Having found Seth, I didn't go any further. Indeed, I haven't even finished all the Seth books. I have done very little reading of other psychics, just enough to conclude that the quality of their material was inferior. Seth is my Bible.

I agree that it would be nice to tie Seth's statements into other things, such as quantum mechanics, but I question if that is an appropriate subject for an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias are supposed to deal in cold, hard facts. Finding common ground among various sciences and disciplines gets us into theoretical areas which are best explored in books or magazine articles -- don't you think?

As for peer review, it seems to me that the parapsychology field is too chaotic for that. Also, isn't peer review something of a yoke? Isn't that one of the problems with science, that it is somewhat straight-jacketed? Even with peer review, science will never give parapsychology any credence.

Getting back to the article, why don't you take a stab at making the changes that you would like to see? You clearly have more knowledge than I do of the field as a whole. Just remember that the article is about Jane Roberts and Seth, not about parapsychology in general.

By the way, if you find ANYONE who is versed in both Seth and quantum theory, you have found a very remarkable person indeed! Perhaps YOU are that remarkable person.

One more thing: this article has plenty of defects, especially insofar as its being comprehensive is concerned. I haven't added any of Seth's statements and theories from the later books, like frameworks. Also, I haven't even read Jane's biography yet, and I know little about her non-Seth writings. This article is very lopsided towards the early Seth readings, and I think it should have more information about Jane herself.

Are you the one that I exchanged some emails with?--Caleb Murdock (talk) 07:17, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Caleb. Are you still using the address at purebeads? I sent you an email going into further discussion on this (since we already have two huge archive pages of discussion already and the email was a bit lengthy).R. Chappell (talk) 01:05, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Seth vs. Jane Roberts

Not to criticize . . . but wouldn't it be a good idea to spin most of this off into a separate "Seth" article? There is very little information here about Roberts herself as opposed to Seth's ideas, and Roberts had plenty of books herself, none of which are really discussed here. 70.186.172.75 (talk) 23:01, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

You are ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. And if you look at the section The Seth Material, you'll see a notation that that will be done (but I haven't had the time, since I run a small business).

I have begun a Seth page. I started it with the Mirror approach, letting Caleb do the actual deletion of material from the Jane Roberts page. The first couple paragraphs use the "ELIZA" principle of keeping the same basic material but inverting grammatical references. Hope this helps at least give us a place to work. TaoPhoenix (talk) 06:11, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I haven't been editing the article much, or looking on this discussion page. I'll look at what you've started in the next day. Personally, I didn't want to spin off the Seth Material section until I had read Jane's biography and filled in more biographical information in this article. With the Seth Material stuff moved, this article will be pretty empty.--Caleb Murdock (talk) 10:23, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I just added a major new section roughing out Jane's role outside of her sessions, and her contributions to writing process theory. TaoPhoenix (talk) 05:34, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi Caleb. Maybe "Empty" is where we need to start so we know where the baseline stands. At least for me, it feels easier to work on a "growing" page after a split than a "mature-looking" one that reached a certain length. Also, I didn't see this Seth on the Seth Disambiguation page, which I hope you can correct. (I didn't even see a relevant topic heading!). Can we go ahead with the Split? TaoPhoenix (talk) 03:00, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry that I haven't been paying attention. My business keeps me very busy.

By split, do you mean moving The Seth Material section to its own article? Sure! Let's just do it. I don't know how to do it, though, but I assume you do.

Sorry again for not checking this page more often.--Caleb Murdock (talk) 19:01, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

I already moved a copy of the info on Seth the entity character to its own page. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth,_(%22spirit_guide%22_entity) . I would like you to do the deletion of this moved material from the Jane Roberts page and the related note "this article has been split for clarity" etc. TaoPhoenix (talk) 05:44, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree with your naming the article Seth. It should be named Seth Material.--Caleb Murdock (talk) 02:01, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

I am a bit surprised, but content enough with the fact that at least "Seth" is an option on the disambiguation page, and the redirect seems to work. Did I fall into one of those notability principle mistakes? Seth is not quite a fictional character, but not quite a standard person either. However, the basic split is complete, so I'll go change gears and see what substantive notes I can add. TaoPhoenix (talk) 04:02, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Dear Caleb, I see the undo you posted. I had hoped provide texture to the Person Behind the Process, and had thought I satisfied neutrality and verifiability. However, since that is not an aspect you wish to pursue in the article, I will retire now from this article having done my small part. TaoPhoenix (talk) 02:21, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

The situation is this: I have been doing most of the editing on the article, but I have read only one of Jane's non-Seth books, so it is the Seth material that I am mostly familiar with. It's my intention to read all her books, but who knows when I will be able to.

If you know a lot about Jane herself, then you should add what you know to the article. Once the Seth Material is spun off, I would expect to most edit the new article, since that is what I am familiar with.--Caleb Murdock (talk) 05:15, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

How about materials from Jane's introductions? She makes a fascinating point towards the skeptics that she didn't feel able to match Seth's flawless control in her "regular" condition. In addition, she says that however the Trance state worked, it didn't give her the creative fulfillment of her standard creative process. There's something to be learned here about command of one's powers - she/they calmly proceeded to produce a colossal wealth of information *without any hint of "Writer's Block". In that sense, it's lovely to read Robert's notes. (Something like) "Jane had the flu and was ill for two weeks. Seth was not remotely perturbed. He continued in the same paragraph he left off." --TaoPhoenix (talk) 04:05, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I didn't see you post this comment two weeks ago. To be honest, I'm just plugging along reading the early material and I'm not focussed on Jane's biographical stuff. What I plan to do is to read her biography and update the article when I do that (sometime this year). But as I said, you should add whatever information you know to be accurate. I don't own the article, and you don't have to wait for my initiative. However, you can expect me to be interested in whatever you add, and possibly to adjust the language to be consistent with the tone of the article.--Caleb Murdock (talk) 08:48, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, that's cool. I have bought The Oversoul Seven Trilogy and want to start reading it after I finish up with Unknown Reality . . . I can maybe make some notes as I read it and see what we can make of that. I am not much of a writer and you have done an incredible job with the article so far, so at the moment I am just adding citations as I find them n the books I have. So anything I add you might want to come behind and cleanup. Could create a subpage so we can experiment without messing the article up. But I think Roberts' work deserves much more attention than it has got . . . I seemed to have run across it by "accident" but wil do my best to help out. Cheers! 70.186.172.75 (talk) 11:31, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Hey Caleb, I like what you're doing with this article, I have read 10+ books in the Seth series, and have also made a personal visit down to Yale University to see Jane's original writings and notes on the Seth Material. Trust me on this one that making a visit and seeing the originals, along with the stuff she never published, is amazing, and lends even more credence to what Seth is saying through her. I would like to say a lot more, but maybe if you want to shoot me an email at dlkoepke@gmail.com, I can tell you anything that comes to mind from my visit down there. Also, I have read Wholeness and the Implicate Order by David Bohm, and I believe it is essential reading for anyone interested in Seth. A lot is hard to understand from someone without a science background, but he makes a great attempt to break it down to the layman and does a great job of making it clear what he is trying to say. His thesis is essentially what Seth says, reality is an unbroken whole with little slivers of consciousnss/energy that are separate in their identity yet still part of the greater whole. I will add a section to this article once I feel that I understand Bohm's book a little better. I will also have a lot more to add down the line. Email me, Caleb, I'd love to talk to you. - David K —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.69.230.132 (talk) 09:00, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Channelling William James

Under "Non-Seth books" it states: "She also purportedly channelled other personalities, including the philosopher William James, the painter Paul Cézanne, and the painter Rembrandt, all deceased". In Session 718 in "The Unknown Reality, Vol.2", it is stated that Jane tuned into the "world view" of William James, but that she did not channell him personally (a world view being a "real thing" can thus be tuned into by others). Seth says that this is usually what happens when famous people are channelled rather than direct contact by the entiity itself. Can you check up on this? Thanks. 70.186.172.75 (talk) 11:29, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I guess that I goofed. Interestingly enough, the William James book is the only non-Seth book of Jane's that I have read, but that was about 20 years ago. However, is it really so far off to say that she channelled James when she just channelled his world view? I'm not sure.

Can you suggest some language as to how to change it? Perhaps we should just eliminate James' name from that sentence. To specifically say that she purportedly channelled James' "world view" may not make sense to many readers.

Where would I check? I may have the James book around somewhere.--Caleb Murdock (talk) 22:46, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I see the problem. I just thought I would bring it to your attention. For most readers, the notion that ideas or perspectives in themselves are "real" as a chair is real will be a bit hard to explain in such a short space. Frankly, it would probably be best to leave it as it is, but I just wanted to make sure that this was what you had intended. Simplifying Seth is no easy task. ;) 70.186.172.75 (talk) 23:45, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Robert F Butts passed away

Robert Butts just passed away not too long ago: http://www.newworldview.com/blogs/helfrich/archive/2008/05/29/in-memoriam-robert-f-butts.aspx Can someone add this to the material? I'm not very good at editing pages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rmkreeg (talk • contribs) 07:17, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I added dates after his name to indicate birth and death . . . Caleb does most of the real editing on the article. You might want to ping him to see if he can spin off an article on Butts or add some more notes about him. 70.186.172.75 (talk) 17:35, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't see any reason to do an article on Butts. He wasn't famous in his own right.--Caleb Murdock (talk) 10:25, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Merging articles

As I have stated repeatedly now, the Seth Material section was originally part of this article and many people, including an arbitrator, suggested that it be spun off into it's own article, and that's why that was done. The Seth Material section had gotten too large and unwieldy for a biographical article. The Seth Material information belongs in its own article.--Caleb Murdock (talk) 08:05, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

The only unwieldy part is the tenets section, which isn't sourced. Verbal chat 08:31, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose merge. Seth Material is obviously an independent topic, notable in its own right. Seth Material article is well-written, encylopedic and sourced. It was justifiably spun off from this article just a few months ago. Merging its contents back here will simply bloat this article to no benefit. Gandalf61 (talk) 08:51, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Support merge The current Seth Material article is not reliably sourced and doesn't establish notability, etc. It is also written in an essay style with an obvious bias, via an in-universe framing and a non-encyclopaedic tone. By merging relevant material into this article, and sourcing it, we are saving it from deletion. Also, the Seth material is by it's very nature entirely entangled with Jane Roberts. To separate it causes many neutrality concerns, amongst others. The salvageable material has already been copied here, and has made this article better. Verbal chat 09:05, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose merge. I came to this discussion from this report at the fringe theory noticeboard. I did some research after reading the report and entered a comment there. Jane Roberts was a notable author of many books that were major bestsellers in the 1980s. Whatever the content of her books was, she was known as an author, widely published. Her books have been translated around the world and are mostly still in print today, 30 years later. As a biography article about an author, this topic is sufficiently notable.

The Seth Material is in itself notable as a separate topic. "Seth" was one of the most widely-known "channeled entities" (so-called) that were popular as part of the new age movement that was active in the USA in the late 1970s through the early 1990s. The Seth writings were discussed by multiple authors as religious or spiritual philosophy works, and have been used by various new age groups for meditations and other such activities. There is a lot of secondary source information available. All that's needed is for editors to find it and bring it to the article. There's no good reason to merge the article about the spiritual philosophy works into the article about the author. They are separate topics, each individually notable. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 10:11, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Could you provide references (WP:RS) for that? It seems to fit quite well in this article. The Seth entity had no known existence outside of Jane's channelling (apart from some claims which are considered fringe even by advocates), and Jane voiced concerns that it might be an aspect of her own psyche. How do you address the other concerns above? Verbal chat

I have notified the other involved parties, that haven't already commented, of this thread. Verbal chat 12:15, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Jack, we can't just take your word for it. Reliable secondary source, please! I have NO problem with two articles here but only if there are sufficient sources. Moreschi (talk) 13:28, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

strongly support merge- maybe merge the roberts one to this one- either would be fine. I think the SM article is -probably- an accurate summary of the teachings- but it contains obscure detail unnecessary for an encyclopedia, and some of it is unimportant, but I wasn't sure what to take out. It should be summarised more briefly, at least. Sticky Parkin 12:18, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose merge. The Seth Material is notable . . . whether or not other new age texts would be considered mainstream, today I do not know, but there are secondary sources available, but the problem is to track them down and insert them into the article. Since Roberts died over twenty years ago, this may take some research, but I have found a few myself. But at the time they were considered notable and there has got to be more data available to support the tenets. If you had to summarize the material, I would say the "create your own reality" stuff and the material on probabilities would be the main ideas. Seth mentioned Christ/God/Paul of Tarsus and even Reincarnation but none of these items were central to his message. 70.186.172.75 (talk) 14:01, 1 December 2008 (UTC)