“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Where do the events of our lives begin or end? Where do we fit into them, individually and as members of the species? These questions, with Seth’s explanations, are the heart of Volume 1. Because “Unknown” Reality is organized along intuitive rather than consecutive lines, though, it’s difficult to provide a brief résumé. Jane probably described Volume 1 as simply as possible, however, when she said: “Volume 1 provides the general background and information upon which the exercises and methods in Volume 2 depend.” I quoted that statement in Volume 1’s Epilogue, and now, after finishing my own work on the entire manuscript, I realize how truly apropos it is.

Later in these notes I plan to return to Seth’s point about the psyche’s events and time. In any case, I finished preparing Volume 1 for publication in January 1977, and it appeared in print later that year. We were delighted that the public could take advantage of part of the material while I made the second volume ready. The days and weeks I spent working on my notes for Volume 2 began to pile up into months, however, and I became more and more concerned.

The appendix idea worked out well in The Seth Material and in Seth Speaks, and in both volumes of “Unknown” Reality each excerpt or session in an appendix, with whatever notes it might carry, is usually fairly complete in itself. These pieces can be read at any time, but I’d rather the reader went over each one when it’s first mentioned in a footnote; just as he or she ought to check out all other reference material in order throughout both volumes. I think it especially informative to compare Jane’s Psychic Politics with Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality, for she produced large sections of both works concurrently; there are many interesting exchanges of viewpoint between the two.

The two volumes making up The “Unknown” Reality: A Seth Book, were dictated by my wife, Jane Roberts, in cooperation with Seth, the nonphysical “energy personality essence” for whom she speaks when she’s in trance. I wrote in the Introductory Notes for Volume 1 that Jane began delivering “Unknown” Reality (as we soon came to call it) in the 679th session for February 4, 1974, and finished it with the 744th session for April 23, 1975. She produced the two books in an accumulated trance time of about 90 hours — an accomplishment that I think quite remarkable.

As soon as I realized that Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment was going to be so long that it would require publication in two volumes, I began to think about how I was going to summarize here all of the material that Jane, Seth, and I had contributed to Volume 1. I developed the hilarious notion that if I did the job the way I really wanted to, this introduction would be as long as that first volume is itself! Then I realized that a lengthy, elaborate introduction for Volume 2 is hardly necessary, and I began to relax about the challenge.

What is necessary is for the reader to closely review Volume 1 before digging into Volume 2. There isn’t any better way to grasp the complex themes of that first book. [...]

“Seth used Session 909 as a bridge between chapters 6 and 7 in Dreams. This means that now the session serves as a connective—a very effective lure, say—between volumes 1 and 2. Indeed, in retrospect it almost seems as though Seth, that ‘energy personality essence,’ planned it that way! [...] I thank each reader for his or her patience in accepting the publication of Dreams in two volumes.”

First, Seth’s headings for the six chapters of Volume 1 give a broad outline of his material in that book:

Seth himself said nothing about publishing “Unknown” Reality in one volume, two volumes, or even more, while he was producing it. [...] If you want to divide it into two volumes, that is fine. You will find several points where this can be done …” In our final view, however, the obvious point of division is also the best one: three sections in each volume. [...]

As I note in the Epilogue for this volume, Section 6 in Volume 2 contains the story of how we moved into our “hill house,” just outside Elmira, N.Y., a month before Seth completed that section — and his part in “Unknown” Reality as a whole — in April, 1975. [...] Politics is also mentioned in the Epilogue to Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality, and my first session notes on it show up in Section 4, in the second volume.

As “Unknown” Reality progresses into Volume 2, it’s natural that I use notes more and more often to call attention to earlier sessions. When those sessions are in Volume 1, think of that book as a separate entity used for reference in the same way that Seth Speaks, Adventures in Consciousness, or any of Jane’s other books are. At the same time, in an effort to build some mental bridges between the two parts of “Unknown” Reality, I’ve made it a point occasionally to lift something out of one volume for inclusion in the other, or at least to include that kind of reference.

[...] For some time all of us present had been aware that as a single volume this new work would be more massive than we wanted it to be. [...] Not only would the expanded format be something out of the ordinary in itself, but it meant that with two volumes I’d have the room I needed for notes and references; excerpts from Jane’s ESP class sessions, as well as from “regular” sessions dated before and after the production time of “Unknown” Reality; a little of Jane’s poetry; and appendixes — all of which I thought would add extra dimensions of consciousness to the books. [...]

In 10 of the sessions between the numbers 314 and 325 in Volume 7 we see how, with Jane’s need and consent, Seth was reaching into deeper, more penetrating material involving her conscious and unconscious lives. [...] (I’m correcting the page proofs for Volume 7 now.) We had never called those sessions in Volume 7 deleted, though, and I’m happy now to trust that they may help readers gain insight into some of their own challenges. [...] With the publication of Volumes 7 and 8 I’d like to hear from readers about benefits they may have derived from experimenting with Seth’s ideas. The two volumes are to be published at the same time in 2001 by Rick Stack, the proprietor of New Awareness Network, Inc. Rick has of course published the first six volumes of The Early Sessions.

[...] It’s with much feeling indeed that I try to write briefly about the 16 private or “deleted” Seth sessions, ranging from numbers 367 to 387, that aren’t included in this Volume 8 of The Early Sessions. This is the first group of full-length sessions to be omitted in all of the volumes of The Early Sessions so far. Jane held only five “regular” or public sessions while delivering this large group, and those five are presented in Volume 8.

Not that those personal sessions in Volume 7 represent the beginnings of Seth’s efforts—always with Jane’s and my permission, indeed encouragement—to offer his understandings of our challenges. [...] See Volume I of The Early Sessions. [...] I deleted some of his early information for us from Volume I.)

[...] As soon as Rick Stack finishes publishing The Early Sessions (probably with Volume 9, it seems at this time), we plan to launch the Personal Sessions series. Actual title and number of volumes unknown at present. [...]

[...] But as Jane enthusiastically put it when we were discussing where to divide the six sections of “Unknown” Reality, Volume One, provides the general background and information upon which the exercises and methods in Volume 2 depend.” Then she reminded me of Seth’s final lines for this first volume (given after break ended at 11:05 in the 704th session), and I suggest that the reader review that material now.

So by now Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality is well along toward completion. Seth finished his part of the second volume over a year ago, and since then I’ve carefully gone over my original notes for it; I’ve rewritten almost all of them (often many times) in an effort to get them just right, in my view. [...]

Many good things will be found in Volume 2. Perhaps I can intrigue our readers by giving Seth’s headings for the three sections it will contain. In length those sections may somewhat exceed the three in Volume 1, and are rather complicated.

I began this piece soon after finishing the Introductory Notes for Volume 1 in the summer of 1976.

After we had published Seth’s “Unknown” Reality in two volumes back in 1977 and 1979, Jane and I decided that we wanted to keep his books shorter, and to issue them more frequently. Never again would we go the way of two volumes, we thought—yet here we are, doing it once more!

When I began putting together Seth’s dictation for Dreams, and adding Jane’s and my own notes, plus excerpts from other relevant sessions, it soon became obvious that the entire work was going to be too long for one volume. [...] So with the help of our editor, Tam Mossman, and others at Prentice-Hall, the decision was made to publish Dreams in two volumes. [...]

This time, however, unlike the case with “Unknown” Reality, there won’t be any two-year wait between the production of the two volumes for Dreams—only a few months at the most. In the meantime, here are Seth’s chapter headings for the second volume, to show the direction his material takes:)

[...] This means that now the session also serves as a connective—a very effective lure, say—between volumes 1 and 2. Indeed, in retrospect it also seems as though Seth, that “energy personality essence,” planned it that way! [...] I thank each reader for his or her patience in accepting the publication of Dreams in two volumes. [...]

Beginning in June 1974, then, while writing notes and appendixes for Volume 1 of “Unknown”, and taking Seth’s dictation for Volume 2, I spent eight months producing the art work for Jane’s Adventures in Consciousness and for her book of poetry, Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time; I finished all of those drawings in January 1975. [...] Jane finished dictating Volume 2 of “Unknown” for Seth in April 1975, and I started my notes and appendixes for it. [...] I completed my own writing for Volume 1 of “Unknown” in October. [...] I finished typing the manuscript for Volume 1 late in November, spent December checking it, and mailed it to Prentice-Hall early in January 1977.

(It wasn’t until I was checking the page [or printer’s] proofs for Volume 1 last week that I realized Seth hadn’t followed through on his promise. [...] I asked Jane if Seth could devote the next session to that subject matter so that I could insert it in Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality as a note or an appendix, since I had plenty of work to do yet for that second volume. [...]

[...] I’m all too conscious of the great amount of physical time I’m spending on the two volumes of “Unknown” Reality; I often feel responsible for holding up publication of Volume 2 especially, since Seth finished dictating it almost exactly two years ago. [...]

Note that even though Seth finished dictating Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality almost three years ago (in June 1974), and I completed my own notes and appendixes for it six months ago, we’re just now coming to the end of the long, complicated process involved in following the manuscript through the editorial and production stages necessary to get the book out into the marketplace. Checking the page proofs is the last stage we go through before publication, and Volume 1 is due to be marketed this summer — probably in July.

6. In Volume 1: See the material from 10:49 to 11:22 for the 684th session. In Volume 2: See the 716th session, for instance.

1. As defined in Note 9 for Session 682, in Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality: “Chromosomes are microscopic bodies into which the protoplasmic substance of a cell nucleus separates during cell division. [...]

In Volume 2, see Note 14 for Appendix 12.

3. Seth packed a lot of information into the short 689th session for Volume 1. He discussed the innumerable experiments of consciousness with animal-man and man-animal forms; the great communication between man and animal in ancient times, and the deep rapport of both with their natural heritage; psychic and biological blueprints and cellular precognition; the growth of man’s ego consciousness; the beginnings of our god concepts and mythology; and more.

A second-volume book can often work in such a way. But Volume 1 will do excellently as soon as Volume 2 is in the offing. And before that there will be other spurts, as those people who are now reading the earlier books will begin to look for Volume 1. There is a lag there.

[...] Many people rushed out to buy the book at once, and are impatiently awaiting Volume 2. Many booksellers ordered “Unknown”, sold many copies, and then returned large numbers. Reasoning that when the second volume came out, they would reorder and have both together.

[...] The backward motion referred to time, and how much time you felt existed between the book’s dictation and the delivery of Volume 2.

(“Well, I was going to ask why we’re getting all those returns on Volume 1.”)

[...] It gains tremendous power but this seems to happen when a certain volume is reached. The volume is somewhat objectionable in our circumstances, living in an apartment. Perhaps this volume is a method I have chosen subconsciously to click Seth in? If so surely the two of us could find another method or certainly control the volume? [...]

[...] She still habitually referred to “Unknown” Reality as a one-volume work — even as Seth himself did in the session this evening — despite the decision made 10 days ago to publish it in two volumes. [...]

(“1. What do you think about this work being published in two volumes?

[...] (His comments in the 750th session as to why “Unknown” Reality was written, are quoted in the Introductory Notes for Volume 1.)

[...] It should be published a few months after this present volume is issued.

(Volume 2 will be marketed a few weeks in advance of Psyche, of course, as it should be, even though because of press scheduling the much shorter Psyche was printed first. [...] Volume 2 is a massive book, yet I still couldn’t believe all the time — almost exactly five years — that had passed since Jane, Seth, and I began work on it. When one added the largely overlapping time spent on Volume 1, our temporal investment approached five-and-a-half years. Naturally we’d been involved in a number of other projects at the same time, as I’ve indicated in my notes for Mass Events, yet for me especially the publication of the two volumes of “Unknown” Reality meant that we had arrived at a certain point in the development and presentation of the Seth material: In those books, through correlating them in a modest way with our previous works, I’d attempted to show the reader just what the three of us had managed to achieve before Seth led us into Psyche — and, as it developed, Mass Events.

[...] On the 14th we received from Prentice-Hall our complimentary copies, just off the press, of Seth’s Psyche; then on the 18th we received Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality.

(Seth Two wasn’t dealt with in Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality. In Note 1 for Appendix 18, I wrote that I wanted to at least briefly discuss Seth Two in another appendix for this Volume 2, “the idea being that that material can be taken as an extension of the Jane-Ruburt-Seth study presented here.” [...]

(Jane’s expressions of long sound and her sensations of massiveness are of course directly related to the multidimensional neurological activity, the “sidepools” of consciousness, that she described in Appendix 4 of Volume 1. Seth also mentioned neurological pulses and/or speeds in various sessions in Volume 1. In the opening delivery for Session 686, for example, see his information on our species’ selection of one “official” series of neurological pulses for physical reality, and, at 12:19 A.M., his remarks on prejudiced perception. [...]

[...] In Volume 1, Seth devoted much of the 681st session to a discussion of probabilities, or, in sum, All That Is, and interwound Jane’s psychic and physical experiences with that material: “The cellular consciousness experiences itself as eternal … Part of Ruburt’s feeling of massiveness² comes from the mass [life-to-death] experience of the body, existing all at once. [...]

(Finally, the excerpt to follow from the 612th session is presented just as received, but I’ve updated some of the notes for it [beginning with Note 4] in order to take advantage of later material, including some published in Volume 1.)

These eight to ten volumes are meant to show Jane’s and my growth—in the most literal way—but always that of my wife, above all else. [...] The sessions in one of the volumes published by Rick are accompanied by my drawings of the objects used in the series of “envelope tests” we conducted, both for ourselves and long-range with a well-known scientist, over some 11 months.

I’m tremendously pleased that Rick Stack, the proprietor of New Awareness Network Inc., is publishing the eight-to-ten-volume set of The Early Sessions. [...]

[...] Also, even though I’d been so intimately involved with the Seth material from the very beginning, for example, I didn’t fully comprehend the volume of just the session material that we’d accumulated over a total of 21 years. [...]

The 699th session, in Volume 1, dealt in part with dream images and subjective dream “photographs.” [...] Now I can add that at the time Jane actually wrote two poems on dreaming; I’ve been saving the second one for use in Volume 2.

[...] In Volume 1, see not only Session 681 between 10:22 and 11:47 for data on one of her massive experiences, but that session’s accompanying Appendix 3. Then in this section of Volume 2, see both Note 9 and Appendix 19 for the 712th session, concerning material on Jane’s long-sound trances; during one of these it could theoretically take her a week — or a century — of our time to pronounce just one syllable of one word.

(I took the sign of migration as a good omen, though, for the circumstances of the flight were strongly reminiscent of those described at the beginning of the 687th session, in Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality. [...]

(In connection with these notes, and Seth’s excerpts after 11:40, then, I recommend a review of the following in Volume 1:

[...] In this present volume, perhaps in an appendix, I hope to add excerpts from some of Seth’s unpublished observations on the psychological bridge linking Jane and himself. Right now, however, see Jane’s essay on her relationship with Seth as given in the Introductory Notes for Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality.

[...] Then in Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality, Seth refers to Adventures on occasion, while I give information about it in Note 3 for his Preface, and Note 5 for Session 680, among others.

Throughout this volume, as in the first one, I’ll be referring to Jane’s other books. [...]

[...] However, for the reasons given in Note 3 for Session 687, in Volume 1, we’d rather think of the molecular components of cells as participating in the structures of a variety of forms. [...]

2. As I wrote in the Introductory Notes for Volume I of “Unknown” Reality, “I think it important to periodically remind the reader of certain of Seth’s basic ideas throughout both volumes….” [...]

19. Jane described one of her adventures with probable realities in Appendix 4 for Volume 1: She tuned in to her own “sidepools of consciousness,” her own “probable neurological materializations….” (My personal opinion is that although many may think it difficult reading, Appendix 4 contains some of the most important information in Volume 1.)

(Originally I planned this appendix on evolution to contain just three widely separated excerpts from Seth’s material: an early unpublished session, a few passages in Seth Speaks, and one in Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality. [...]

(Our beliefs and intents cause us to pick “from an unpredictable group of actions,” or probabilities, those that we want to happen, as Seth tells us in the 681st session in Volume 1; therefore, from my physically oriented probability the considerable work I’ve put into this paper is an examination of evolution in connection with a number of Seth’s concepts. [...]

11. In Volume 1, see these two sessions: the 694th to 10:00 P.M., and the 702nd, with Note 6. In Volume 2, see Note 24 for Appendix 18.

13. See Appendix 10 in Volume 1. In Volume 2, see the 708th session after 11:40, and (added a few days later) the opening notes for Session 713. [...]

[...] In Volume 1, see the notes leading off the 702nd session.

[...] His material is also an extension of much that he gave in the 679th session for Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality, when he discussed the early background of the probable Jane who chose to live in this physical reality, and how that Jane began to contend with her strongly mystical nature. [...]

7. In Volume 1, see the 689th session. In Volume 2, see the references in Note 7 for Session 708.

8. So far in the two volumes of “Unknown” Reality, Seth has discussed the freedom of cells from time, along with a number of their other attributes, in well over a dozen sessions. In Session 684 (in Volume 1) he said at 10:07: “Your body’s condition at any time is not so much the result of its own comprehension of its ‘past history’ as it is of its own comprehension of future probabilities. [...]

In Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality, see Note 4 for Session 682.

2. For material on CU and EE units in Volume 1, see sessions 682 (with notes 3 and 4), 683–84, and 688. [...]

1. See Note 3 for Appendix 12, in this volume.

2. In Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality, Seth designed all but two of his eight exercises, or practice elements, to help the reader directly explore some of the aspects of probable realities — although even the exceptions (numbers 6 and 8) aren’t far removed from probability concepts. [...]

4. In Volume 1, see Session 687 at 10:01: Seth discussed how the dreamer and his or her probable selves, having “the same psychic roots,” can share in working out a given challenge in a probable reality.

[...] See the notes at the close of that session, in Volume 1.