“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Indeed, when a child is involved, the keener his use of the reasoning mind becomes the dimmer his mathematical abilities grow. Others, children [or adults] who would be classified as mentally deficient, can tell, or have been able to tell, the day of the week that any given date, past or present, would fall upon. Others have been able, while performing various tasks, to keep a precise count of the moments from any given point in time. There have been children, again, with highly accomplished musical abilities, and great facility with music’s technical aspects—all such accomplishments before the assistance of any kind of advanced education.

Direct cognition is an inner sense. In physical terms you might call it remote sensing. Your physical body, and your physical existence, are based upon certain kinds of direct cognition, and it is responsible for the very functioning of the reasoning mind itself. Scientists like to say that animals operate through simple instinctive behavior, without will or volition: It is no accomplishment for a spider to make its web, a beaver its dam, a bird its nest, because according to such reasoning, such creatures cannot perform otherwise. The spider must spin his web. If he chooses not to, he will not survive. But by that same reasoning—to which, of course, I do not subscribe—you should also add that man can take no credit either for his intellect, since man must think, and cannot help doing so.

(9:33.) Man’s reasoning mind, however, with its fascinating capacity for logic and deduction, and for observation, rests upon (pause) a direct cognition—a direct cognition that powers his thoughts, that makes thinking itself possible. He thinks because he knows how to think by thinking (intently), even though the true processes of thought are enigmas to the reasoning mind.¹

1. With a little reflection it becomes obvious, but I think it important to note that Jane’s expression of the Seth material is certainly the result of her direct cognition. Because she has to deliver it linearly in words, which take “time,” she cannot produce her material almost at once, as the mathematical prodigy can his or her answers, but in their own way her communications with Seth are as psychologically clear and direct as the calculator’s objective products are with numbers, or the musician’s are with notes. From the very beginning of the sessions, in late 1963, I appreciated the speed with which Jane delivered the Seth material, and began recording the times involved throughout each session. I now think that spontaneously starting to do that reflected my own intuitive understanding of her direct cognition, long before either one of us knew how to describe it. And when Jane speaks extemporaneously for Seth, her delivery is even more rapid. It was most definitely faster—sometimes spectacularly so—during all of those years she gave sessions in ESP class.

Regardless of who or what he is, then, with Jane’s permission Seth adds his material to the information possessed by her reasoning mind—and thus offers it to the reasoning minds of others.