“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“You make your own reality.” That statement is one of the cornerstones of Seth’s material, stated almost from the beginning of our sessions and emphasized throughout his books. In Mass Events, though, Seth goes further, maintaining that our private impulses are meant to provide the impetus for the development of our own abilities in a way that will also contribute to the best interests of the species and the natural world as well. He’s speaking of our normal impulses here, those that we’ve been taught are dangerous, chaotic, and contradictory. Seth maintains that we can’t trust ourselves while distrusting our impulses at the same time. Much of this book is concerned with the purposes of our impulses, and the reasons for their poor reputations in the eyes of science and religion. What Seth is really saying here is that our impulses are meant to help us create our own realities on a personal basis in a way that will enhance both our private lives and our civilizations.

And what is my own part in all of this? I see it as harking back to the poet’s original role; to explore the reaches of his or her private psyche, pushing against usual psychological boundaries until they give, opening up a new mystical territory — the psyche of the people, of the species itself — perceiving a spectacular vision of inner reality that the poet then communicates to the people, translating that vision through words, rhythm, or songs.

The earliest poets were probably half shaman, half prophet, speaking for the forces of nature, for the “spirits” of the living and the dead, voicing their visions of man’s unity with the universe. They spoke their messages, sang their songs, chanted their visions aloud. And maybe that’s why Seth speaks, communicating first through words, rather than, say, through automatic writing. Seth’s books are first of all spoken productions. Perhaps the Seth sessions themselves harken back to some ancient time when we received much of our pertinent information about ourselves in just such a fashion: one of us journeying for the others into the “mass unconsciousness” — a journey that somehow altered and expanded the personality — and then communicating our visions as best we could.

If so, though, such altered “between world” personalities can be remarkably stable; and if they form according to our ideas of individuality, they can certainly outdo us in their unique complexity. For if Seth is only a psychological model filled out by my unconscious trance material, then he certainly puts our usual concepts of personality to shame, and by implication shows that we ourselves have a long way to go if we are to use our full potential.

As far as my relationship with Seth and his with me, because of our long-standing association I think we must have formed a unique psychological alliance; somehow I am part Seth, and in sessions at least, Seth must be part Jane, in a kind of psychological bonding on both sides. Seth must use my voice to speak and my life as reference, and certainly the contents of my mind are vastly expanded as a result of the sessions. My daily life is lived with the knowledge of that association, of course, and my normal routine now includes “turning into Seth” twice weekly, and has for years.

I think that such phenomena were important in evolutionary terms, helping to shape man’s consciousness. Not that such material wasn’t often distorted, or just as often discounted: In any case, it would have to be interpreted again and again so that it applied to the species’ experience in time’s framework.

Talk about psychological complexities! I was just presented with an excellent example of the ideas I’ve been discussing. As I wrote the previous few paragraphs of this Introduction, the words themselves seemed to carry me on with a certain rhythm. I felt as if I were drawing on energy and knowledge beyond my usual capacities. Then, since it was late afternoon, I took a break for a brief nap. More ideas came to me that I scribbled down in the bedroom. The subjective pace quickened and kept accelerating — then I hit a psychological brick wall, and I could carry the concept no further. At that point I suddenly recognized Seth “around the edges” of my mind. The next moment, I fell asleep. When I awakened half an hour later, I prepared dinner. Rob and I ate and watched the television news. Then I went back to my study.

No sooner did I sit down than such a rich vein of material opened that I could hardly write fast enough to get it all down; and it began where my earlier ideas had ended off. I was being given many of the subject headings for — Seth’s next book, even as I was writing the Introduction for this one! Behind each heading or subject, I sensed realms of information available to Seth, but not (in usual terms) to me. Yet there had been an earlier moment just before the onrush of material when I sensed an odd psychological threshold, a certain accelerated state, that in this case at least signaled the intersection of Seth’s thoughts and mine. Then there was a brief point of psychological rest, an almost neutral psychological platform in which Seth’s outline began to emerge.

The Seth sessions and Seth’s books are inevitably connected to my relationship with Rob, of course. He’s far more than a recorder or transcriber of the material. Rob’s remarkable mind with its questions and probing nature has always stimulated me to do my best, and has served as a kind of invisible but sturdy psychological screen, helping me view myself and the sessions as clearly as possible. If it hadn’t been for his encouragement and active participation, I doubt that the Seth sessions would exist in their present form.

So while Seth’s books go out into the public world, the sessions themselves rise from our private lives. Yet those lives are lived in coexistence with a mass arena of events that brush against us gently at times, or drastically affect our days on other occasions. In this book Seth describes the continuum of existence that holds us all together and blends our private experiences into world events. This is your world and ours. Hopefully, this book will help us all make it a better world.