“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Because of my own writing experience, I’m also well aware of the process involved in translating unconscious material into conscious reality. It’s particularly obvious when I’m working on poetry. Whatever else is involved in Seth’s book, certainly some kind of unconscious activity is operating at high gear. It was only natural, then, that I found myself comparing my own conscious creative experience with the trance procedure involved in Seth’s book. I wanted to discover why I felt that Seth’s book was his, as divorced from mine. If both were coming from the same unconscious, then why the subjective differences in my feelings?

I’ve found that only my own writing gives me the particular kind of creative satisfaction that I need, however — the conscious involvement with unconscious material, the “excitement of the chase.” Because Seth does his thing, I am not absolved from doing mine. I would feel deprived if I did not continue with my own work.

Anyone can say, of course, that in Seth’s book the hidden processes are so separate from my normal consciousness that the final product only seems to come from another personality. I can only state my own feelings and emphasize that Seth’s book, and the whole six-thousand-page manuscript of Seth material, don’t take care of my own creative expression or responsibility. If both came from the same unconscious, it seems that there would be no slack to take up.

Despite this, I’m aware of the fact that I was necessary to the production of Seth’s book. He needs my ability with words; even, I think, my turn of mind. Certainly my writing training aids in the translation of his material and helps give it form, no matter how unconsciously this is done. Certain personality characteristics are important too, I imagine — the agility with which I can switch the focus of my consciousness, for example.

Looked at merely as an example of unconscious production, however, Seth’s book clearly shows that organization, discrimination, and reasoning are certainly not qualities of the conscious mind alone, and demonstrates the range and activity of which the inner self is capable. I do not believe that I could get the equivalent of Seth’s book on my own. The best I could do would be to hit certain high points, perhaps in isolated poems or essays, and they would lack the overall unity, continuity, and organization that Seth has here provided automatically.

The whole creative venture may be the initiation of a personality, Seth, who then writes books. Seth may be as much of a creation as his book is. If so, this is an excellent instance of multidimensional art, done at such a rich level of unconsciousness that the “artist” is unaware of her own work and as much intrigued by it as anyone else.

This is a good deal of accomplishment in seven years for any personality, regardless of its status. For a nonphysical personality, it is astonishing indeed. To ascribe all of this activity to a figment of the unconscious seems rather much. (In the same amount of time I’ve published two books, finished another, and begun a fourth. I mention this to show that Seth hasn’t been absorbing any of my own creativity.)

Rob and I don’t refer to Seth as a spirit; we dislike the connotations of the term. Actually what we object to is the conventional idea of a spirit, which is an extension of quite limited ideas of human personality, only projected more or less intact into an afterlife. You can say that Seth is a dramatization of the unconscious or an independent personality. Personally, I don’t see why the statements have to be contradictory. Seth may be a dramatization playing a very real role — explaining his greater reality in the only terms we can understand. This is my opinion at this time.

First of all, to me the term “unconscious” is a poor one, barely hinting at an actual open psychic system, with deep intertwining roots uniting all kinds of consciousness; a network in which we are all connected. Our individuality rises out of it, but also helps form it. This source contains past, present, and future information; only the ego experiencing time as we know it. I also believe that this open system contains other kinds of consciousness beside our own.

“Perhaps what we are has always waited, hidden in the possibilities of creation, dispersed and unknowing — in the rain and wind that swept across Europe in the thirteenth century — in the heaving mountain ranges — in the clouds that rushed through the skies of other times and places. As dust particles, we may have blown past Greek doorways. We may have been sparked on and off into consciousness and unconsciousness a million times, touched by desire, by yearnings toward creativity and perfection we barely understood.