“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(We sat for the session at about 8:30. Once again Jane used many very long pauses as she spoke for Seth. I think that through Seth tonight she beautifully discusses several of her key insights into the nature of reality—and I don’t think it has ever been done any better.)

(Long pause.) The entire picture of physical life as you understand it must be of course experienced from your own viewpoint, but its complexity, its order and magnificence of structure and design should be understood as composing but one example of the infinite number of realities, each constructed by the propensities and characteristics of its own nature and the nature of its own consciousness.

(9:16.) Give us a moment…. The nature of time, questions concerning the beginning or ending of the universe—these cannot be approached with any certainty by studying life’s exterior conditions, for the physical references themselves are merely the manifestations of inner psychological activity. You are aware of the universe only insofar as it impinges upon your perception. What lies outside of that perception remains unknown to you. It seems to you, then, that the world began—or must have begun—at some point in the past¹ (a one-minute pause at 9:18), but that is like supposing that one piece of a cake is the whole cake, which was baked in one oven and consumed perhaps in an afternoon.

(Pause at 9:35. Scientists do not know how many species exist on earth—only that they total in the billions.) If you read it sideways, so to speak, you would still end up with an orderly universe, but one in which the nature of identity would be read completely differently, stressing adjacent subjective communications of a conscious kind that form other kinds or patterns of subjectivity and psychological continuity. These result in the formation of “personalities” or entities who are aware of their own identities by following different pathways than your own, while also in their way contributing to the formation of your universe even as you do.

They would seem to be the spirits of nature,² as you would be more or less bound to interpret them from your viewpoint. They would certainly be psychological relatives, but with their own time schemes, languages, and psychological affiliations. These do exist along with the kinds of consciousness that you recognize within the structure of physical life. When you dream, however, you often come in contact with these cousins of consciousness. It is not simply that they communicate with you, or you with them, so much as it is that in sleep the conventional properties that you have learned are somewhat loosened and abandoned. You see “the lights around the corner,” so to speak. You see a species of consciousness, a species that must remain unexplained in any normal explanations of evolution, and these hint at the communications that exist at all levels (intently), protecting not only the genetic references necessary to your own kind, but the combinations of other forms of organization that exist adjacent to your own, yet connected to them. You have often misread such references, and many of your legends of good and evil spirits, monsters and strange varieties of artificial creatures, appear in folklore.

2. In Chapter 2 of Dreams, in Volume 1, see Note 5 for Session 885, as well as my comments about naturalism at the end of Note 3 for the last (937th) session.

“The cautions are natural enough under the restrictions man usually places upon consciousness. Ruburt carries his protection and safety wherever he goes. It is a natural grace, characteristic of consciousness of any kind. Its protection and validity are always honored. Ruburt is safe wherever he goes. His psychological stance is honored wherever he goes.

Jane, then, wrote those two poems 16 days before she dictated the last session for Seth’s The Nature of the Psyche on April 4, 1977; one month before she began dictating Mass Events on April 18, 1977; two years and two months before she began God of Jane on May 6, 1979; two years and six months before she began dictating the Preface for Dreams on September 25, 1979; two years and eight months before she came up with the idea for If We Live Again on November 15, 1979; three years and five months before she began dictating Seth’s material on the magical approach to reality in Dreams on August 6, 1980; four years before she began dictating Seth’s sinful-self material in that book on March 11, 1981; four years and three months before she began coming through with her own sinful-self information on June 17, 1981; and four years and five months before, on August 26, 1981, she wrote the poem in Note 6 for Session 936 of Dreams: “Something in me / ebbs and tides, / as if I let myself / for a while / be washed away / out to sea / while leaving / some spidery shell / upon the shore /….”

And as autumns fierce / moods have their /
reasons—in nature’s / deeper sanity / so must…/
my undeviating / direction— /
Though my thoughts’ leaves singly / seem separate /
they ride in one elemental / force / carried weightless— /
Then with them let me / be so supported /
though my tumultuous journeys carry me, / like them, /
above stormy treetops. / For higher still /
the sky holds all / safely contained.