[2] Jon Klimo writes that the Seth books were instrumental in bringing the idea of channeling to a broad public audience.
[3] According to scholar of religion Catherine Albanese, the 1970 release of the book The Seth Material "launched an era of nationwide awareness ... [of c]ommunication with other-than-human entities ... contributing to the self-identity of an emergent New Age movement".
[8] Roberts and Butts claimed that they began to receive coherent messages from a male personality on December 2, 1963, who later identified himself as Seth.
Roberts often sat in a rocking chair during sessions, and she would occasionally smoke cigarettes and sip beer or wine.
[26] The Seth Material says that all individuals create their own circumstances and experiences within the shared earthly environment, similar to the doctrine of responsibility assumption.
These included Thomas Massari, who founded the Seth-Hermes Foundation and said he had channeled Seth as early as 1972; and Jean Loomis, director of the Aquarian Center in Connecticut.
Charles Upton in his book The System of Antichrist, argues that the reason Jane Roberts multiplies the self in many ways is due to a fear of death, and that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and Eastern religions.
[22] The implied influences of Eastern mysticism and philosophy are also highlighted in Astrology and Psychic Phenomena by Terry Holley, E Calvin Beisner and Robert M Bowman Jr, who say, "Husband Robert Butts admitted that similarities exist between Seth's ideas and those of various religious, philosophical, and mystical doctrines from the Near, Middle, or Far East . . .
"[33] Psychologist Paul Cunningham of Rivier University, New Hampshire, analyzed the case of Jane Roberts in his 2010 paper "The Problem of Seth's Origin", concluding that "fraud and cryptomnesia are highly improbable explanations" and suggesting that to "emphasize and expect fraud and trickery ... is essentially a misleading, though culturally expectable, response" to such cases.