“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

On April 12 the space shuttle Columbia was launched into orbit around the earth, and I thought that Jane was complementing that obvious exploration of outside space by exploring inner space with the only vehicle she had available—her own mind. That same day, Seth agreed that her new book idea was a good one. Somewhere in here we received from our friend in California the photocopies I’d asked him to obtain, of the frontmatter for the Spanish-language edition of ESP Power. So the book was out in Spanish, we saw—but we were so preoccupied with Jane’s symptoms and related matters that we let the photocopies lie on a shelf. During this time, we had been often rereading Seth’s information on the sinful self as he’d given it on March 11. [See Note 9 for this session.] That material had deeply touched us. The result was that on April 14, the day Columbia landed, Seth initiated a long series of sessions on both Jane’s own sinful self, and that quality in general. The very next evening Jane allowed him to come through with some extremely important material.¹³

“I resent the designation unjustly given me, for if I have believed in the phenomenon of sin and sought—apparently too rigidly—to avoid it, my intentions and interests always were not the avoidance of sin so much as the pursuit of eternal truths; the alliance with universal goals, the unity in spirit at least of self, whole self, and universal mind. Those goals ignite your creative powers and have (and still do) propelled you to explore all categories of existence possible, seeking to express those divine mysteries that lie within and behind each existence—yours, and mine as well.

“Our explorations involved no second-handed evidence handed down by others, but the direct personal encounter of our consciousness and being with the vast elements of the unknown—a meeting of the self (human and vulnerable) with the psychological realms of gods and eternities; giant realms of mind that our nature felt attracted to … and [was] uniquely equipped to perceive.

To those of us who are rooted in more conventional approaches to our probability, Jane’s course may at times seem incomprehensible—but as far as she’s concerned that only shows our lack of comprehension of her viewpoint. As a mystic she can have motivations toward exploring certain avenues of the human condition that most of us don’t have. Her view of basic reality is her view, and even I must still grope at times to understand her chosen role. To actually carry out her way, as she’s doing, is something I cannot do. Her sacrifice of physical motion in order to have greater creative motion is a “bargain” I shrink from making. Jane used to say to me: “I told myself that if I let myself do that, then I’ll do this in return,” One can say that that kind of equation hardly represents a mystical view, yet I know that in her case it does. I don’t believe those kinds of bargains are necessary in life to begin with, but what’s real for Jane can be quite different than it is for me, and for most other people. She does have her reasons.

Jane’s nature has even led me to speculate more than once that in most basic terms she may be visiting our probable reality from one that’s actually far more native to her nonphysical entity, or whole self. I don’t mean that as a physical creature she has magically switched temporal realities, but that she’s closely allied with that version of herself in that other reality. When I mention this to her, she nods but says little. Jane’s “mission” (a term she wouldn’t use) would be to give us not only greater insight into what our species has done within our historical context, both for better and for worse, but to signal what we can do—to open up unexpected vistas before us, to encourage us to explore those realms far more actively than we have so far.

“I accept everything in the book, but I think I felt that if I was going to tell it like it was—and I was, was determined to—then I also needed more protection from the world, and began cutting down mobility again. My idea is that the eyes get bad after the muscular strain reaches a certain point. The idea [of protection] also came back after reading a book on William James that a friend gave us for Christmas. [James’s] attitudes and mine so often seem similar—that he was determined to be daring, press ahead no matter what, explore consciousness—while at the same time being attracted to safety, disliking controversy, wanting peace, etc. I think I am that way. The long breaks when Seth didn’t dictate [book work] may have come when I got particularly concerned about the material, the wisdom of presenting it to the world.

“But you’re doing great, hon,” I told Jane after I’d read her journal entry. I was glad to reassure her, for I believed what I said. If she has hassles, I added, they’re quite understandable: Not only is she offering our world creative new ways by which to understand reality, but in her uncertainty about what she’s doing, she feels that she must prove her ideas to the world all by herself—something that few people have to do in such an all-encompassing manner. At the same time she has to protect herself, for both of us are caught in the uneasy notion that every time Jane gets too close to any sort of basic truth, she automatically threatens many of the deeply entrenched, rigid belief systems people have built up in our reality. Obviously Jane thinks her contemporaries often reject her—and sometimes I also think they do. Consciousness exploring itself once again, I said, more than a little ironically….

I could add much material from Jane’s personal past to supplement just the session excerpts given here; perhaps the two of us can explore those fascinating connections in a later work. Right now I’ll make just one point: The priest, burning Jane’s books in the backyard of the house she lived in, taught the growing girl in most specific terms that she had to protect her natural abilities and her inquiring mind even from the very institution—the Roman Catholic Church—that she had so strongly identified with.

“I now want to put the sinful-self material in a larger spectrum,” Seth told us in part. “Ideally, infants ‘bond’ with their parents, particularly with the mother but with the father also, and they bond with the general ideas of their society. This offers the sense of safety in which the youngster can then feel free and curious enough to explore its world and the nature of reality.