“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.

I’m including in this chapter a few poems as notes of a subjective autobiography, to show what events triggered this first release of unconscious material on my part, opening the doors to the interior universe; for now I believe that certain personal conditions are characteristic prerequisites for such developments, that the channels of intuitive knowledge are opened according to the intensity of individual need. This need might not be consciously recognized, as it was not in my case, but it must be present.

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.

This next is not as good a poem, aesthetically, as the others, but it was written to Rob and clearly shows the growing sense of panic with which I viewed the passing years. I remember writing it — half in tears.

The wind on the arm blows the hair,
And at the base, a golden mole,
Such a speck as a peach might have,
But the hair arches back to show a gaping hole,
And each ounce of flesh is a fence,
Erected roundly and snug
About hidden landscapes, suns, and shadows,
Inroads laced with prickly shrubs.
Peer through. The holes are not big enough to see much,
But dreams travel wondrous wires.
Fires brighter than autumn moons
Throw leaping shadows on the arm.
Days and nights burn like stars
In the twinkling meadows of the skull,
And through the fence of peach-blooming flesh,
Other fruits blossom, beyond reach.

I think that my “Idea Construction” experience was initiated, then, at least in part, by the need that is apparent in these poems. The last two show early indications of emerging intuitive knowledge. I believe that I had gone as far as my intellect and normal creativity could take me and that new channels were opened when I needed them most. Generally, I think, these other channels open when we have ceased to rely upon most of the answers that have been given to us by others and found wanting. (Along these lines, I wonder if tranquilizers often cut us off from such intuitive breakthroughs by preventing us from coming to grips with the true “darkness of soul” that can precede such experiences and by allowing us to accept temporary, objective and artificial solutions.)