“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

But what initiated the “Idea Construction” experience? Even when I wrote The Seth Material, I didn’t clearly understand why it happened or connect it in any way with my previous life or beliefs. It seemed like a complete intrusion. This present book, devoted to dreams and subjective experience, led me into deeper self-examination. In preparation, I reread my own records and poetry. The poetry itself provides a clear record of subjective thoughts and emotions. And it was through reading this old poetry that I found clues that showed me the points of continuity between my life before my psychic initiation and after it.

The poems show my attitude toward life in general just before my psychic experiences began. When you see the type of poetry that I was writing then, you will understand immediately why the ideas in “Idea Construction” were such a revelation to me. Incidentally, I considered these poems as aesthetic creations. I made no effort at the time to examine my own subjective states — I simply expressed them as best I could and then criticized the poems on their aesthetic merits. The way I saw life was the way life was! It never occurred to me that my own attitudes had anything to do with it.

In other words, my poetry finally revealed to me my state of mind before “Idea Construction” and Seth. Little by little, using it as a guide, other memories came back to me — all trivial in comparison to real tragedy and yet, to me, bitterly depressing. The death of a kitten that year led me to write:

Now I remember that spring, recall sitting at my desk writing poetry, caught up in a feeling that nature was betraying us all with its promise of hope and renewal. It was almost mechanical, I thought, as if some second-hand god kept reusing the same leaves each year, over and over again, and we were too childish to see beneath the subterfuge.

Yet that same May, while I was writing the most pessimistic of poetry, I also remember a break in my mood, a quickening of spirit that was reflected in two poems of quite a different nature. The first was written on my birthday.