“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now: Few people would see any connection between William James and Scott Nearing, and yet both were in their own ways peculiarly concerned with “the American soul.”

Your country, far more than others, has been a country of individualists, do-it-yourselfers—a country of enthusiasts—and of course some fanatics, but a country of pioneers in one fashion or another. As a young mean, Nearing, as he told you, was aware of spiritualism, and of those very aspects that were so explored by James, and he was fascinated. Spiritualism exists with such fervor in your country because Americans like the idea of a communication with the dead on an individual basis, minus the intervention of priests, and hence the pioneering spirit was early tuned to do-it-yourself séances and the like. Americans would explore the spiritual world as they pioneered the physical continent.

These were all exterior versions of his inner spiritual journeys, for he now looked to nature for support, sustenance, and strength. He looked to nature’s virtues. It was not greedy, nor would he be. He revived within himself, and within others, the American pioneering spirit, with its distrust of government, its individualism, and its eccentrics.