“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

That all seeming divisions reflect portions of a unified whole is surely one of our oldest concepts, growing, in those terms, with us out of our prehistory as we struggled to grasp the “true” nature of reality. Traditionally we’ve cast that feeling or knowledge in religious terms, for want of a better framework, but I think that more and more now the search is also on within science for a theory—even a hypothesis—that will lock up our often subjective variables into what might be called a more human equivalent of the still-sought-for unified theory in physics. What are human beings, anyhow? From what Jane and I can gather (through our reading especially), at least some of the world’s leading scientists are becoming willing to contend with consciousness itself. (Including their own consciousnesses? I can’t help wondering!) Portions of the latest scientific literature I have on hand, particularly that produced by physicists, contain references that not long ago would have been branded as metaphysical, or even worse.

But I note with some amusement that science absorbs such heresies by weaving them into and developing them out of current establishment thinking—concepts, say, like the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Put very simplistically, this “quantum approach” allows for the theme that each of us inhabits but one of innumerable probable or parallel worlds. Even the theory of evolution is invoked, for those other worlds are said to evolve in parallel with the one we inhabit. Yet there is no answer within quantum mechanics as to how or why one’s personal identity chooses to follow a certain probable pathway, and consciousness per se is not considered. (Some physicists, however, have implied that subatomic particles—photons—communicate with each other as they take their separate but “sympathetic” paths.) Pardon my irony here, but Seth has always dealt with the ramifications of consciousness and maintained also that we do not inhabit just one probable world, but constantly move among them by choice—and by the microsecond, if one chooses.

Some of our readers, sending us recent books and copies of articles written by scientists working on these subjects, have noted that it must be nice for Jane and me to have concepts that Seth has been discussing for years “corroborated” by the establishment (often we already had the material on file, by the way). But once again irony enters in on my part, for I’m afraid our answer is that in general science isn’t even aware of the existence of the Seth material, notwithstanding the letters of approval and/or encouragement we receive from individual scientists, representing a variety of disciplines. We feel no sense of corroboration. As I wrote to a fan just last week: “No matter what he or she may think of it personally, no reputable scientist is going to publicly espouse a belief in the Seth material. Certainly not career-wise. Not for a long time yet, in our opinion, and for many reasons.”

Some day, for our own amusement—but hardly with the idea of convincing others, let alone influential scientists—I’ll ask Seth to comment upon whatever connections may exist between his ideas and those embedded in quantum mechanics. I’m sure he’s quite entertained by the whole situation—yet also compassionate toward the human strivings involved. He’s never mentioned the concept, nor have we asked him to. I think that Jane has little (if any) interest in whether any connections might exist between the Seth material and the mathematical theory of quantum mechanics. Any discussion of this in our books is strictly my own doing, my own speculation: I think it fun to play creatively with a theory that is, after all, there for anyone to consider, from whatever standpoint. And I maintain that the theory of quantum mechanics does contain strong paranormal aspects, whether or not science admits this.

Granted that our species’ best human understanding of “the mystery of life” and of the universe is exceedingly inadequate, still Jane and I do not think that nature is totally objective, indifferently cruel, or simply uncaring, as science would have us believe. (We also have deep reservations about the theory of evolution and its “survival of the fittest” dogmas, but this isn’t the place to go into those subjects.) Far more basic and satisfactory to us are the intuitive comprehensions that this “nature” we’ve helped create is a living manifestation of All That Is, and that someplace, somewhere within its grand panorama, each action has meaning and is truly redeemed. We are not dwarfed. How could we be? For if, as I wrote earlier, Jane and I agree with the ancient idea that “all seeming divisions reflect portions of a unified whole,” we also think that in some fashion the whole is enclosed within each of its parts. Science calls the idea holonomy, but Seth has been saying the same thing for years without ever mentioning the word. Jane didn’t even know it.

I’ve written these passages knowing, of course, that many of Seth’s points and our own are at best theories, if very intriguing ones. Some may contend that they’re not even theories, but only hypotheses—tentatively inferred explanations requiring much further experimentation and examination. Worse still (I write with some humor), they may “only” be ideas. Whatever their status, Jane and I take heart from the letters sent us by many thousands of readers, who have time and again explained how they put the Seth material to use in very positive physical and mental ways. (Except for a few early instances when we inadvertently lost some of our correspondence, we’ve saved all of it. The cartons are piling up in a cellar storeroom. We hope that eventually our “fan mail” will serve as the foundation for a study concerning the ways in which society reacts to new ideas, through the viewpoints, say, of science, philosophy and psychology, religion, the “occult,” skepticism, generalized deep curiosity, and mental illness. Very abusive responses are also involved, as well as surprising near-illiterate ones.)

I think the beliefs the three of us hold are very creative ones; we accept them on that basis; they are as good “proofs” as we can currently get, and offer their own answers by sparking us into new ways of trying to make sense out of our reality. Science and philosophy will not agree with any of this, I know—at least for the most part, for I’ve read that there’s never an idea so wild that it can’t find a home in the mind of some scientist or philosopher. Jane and I aren’t so naive as to think that we can offer any hard proofs for what we believe, and certainly Seth doesn’t worry about it. Not even when I play around with his ideas relative to quantum theory can such proof be found—yet I let Jane’s “amazingly strong” will be the measuring and observing device that automatically causes “waves” of knowing or consciousness—in Framework 2, for example—to coalesce into the “particles” that make up the physical forms she perceives as her reality in Framework 1, either psychically from a distance or right here.