“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Seth began dictating The “Unknown” Reality: A Seth Book, in the 679th session for February 4, 1974, and finished it with the 744th session for April 23, 1975. In the beginning we anticipated another intriguing Seth book, the successor to Seth Speaks and The Nature of Personal Reality. We thought the new work would probably be a long one, but we hardly expected that it would require publication in two volumes.

The firm decision to do this was made when we were visited by Jane’s editor at Prentice-Hall, Tam Mossman, and a business colleague who accompanied him. By then it was obvious that in a couple of weeks Seth would be through with “Unknown” Reality, as we’d taken to calling it. For some time all of us present had been aware that as a single volume this new work would be more massive than we wanted it to be. Jane and I were really pleased, then, to get the official word. Not only would the expanded format be something out of the ordinary in itself, but it meant that with two volumes I’d have the room I needed for notes and references; excerpts from Jane’s ESP class sessions, as well as from “regular” sessions dated before and after the production time of “Unknown” Reality; a little of Jane’s poetry; and appendixes — all of which I thought would add extra dimensions of consciousness to the books. (And, of course, I couldn’t begin these notes until such a decision had been made.)

Seth presented his sessions for “Unknown” Reality as usual, but dispensed with any chapter framework. He did group his material into six sections, though, with headings. As he told us in the 743rd session, a few days after the visit of Tam and his associate: “This book had no chapters [in order] to further disrupt your accepted notions of what a book should be. There are different kinds of organizations present, however, and in any given section of the book, several levels of consciousness are appealed to at once.” Seth gave no headings for individual sessions, so after each one as it’s listed in the Table of Contents (in each volume), Jane plans to insert a few words indicating at least some of the subjects discussed in that session.

Since the sections themselves are of unequal length, for a while I contemplated trying a four-and-two division; but as Jane commented, “Three sections in one book are enough of a bite for the reader.” We do think most people will find it more convenient to have “Unknown” Reality presented, with indexes, in two shorter works, whether or not they’re of equal length. Volume 2 will be published a year or so after the first printing of Volume 1. After that initial waiting period, the two can always be read together.

Now I’d like to briefly comment on the handling of the notes, excerpts, and other such matter. After Jane began delivering this work it soon became apparent that my notes for it were going to be longer than they are in Seth Speaks and Personal Reality. The very way Seth was presenting his material required this. Jane and I liked the idea because it meant something different from the two previous Seth books, but at the same time I was concerned that the notes would become too prominent. (I felt this way even though Seth told me in a private session in June, 1974: “The notes will take care of themselves. Do not worry.”)

Once we’d decided to publish in two volumes, Jane, Tam, and I agreed that we didn’t want to move all of the supplementary data to the back of each book, as is often done in such cases. Not only would the reader be constantly involved in looking up specific items, but we felt that the shorter notes especially would be too far removed from their intimate positions within the sessions; we wanted these to enhance individual sessions directly without getting in the way, so I worked out a compromise which offers some sort of orderly presentation without being too rigid.

As in Seth Speaks and Personal Reality, the usual notes are presented at break times, but I’ve indicated the points of origin of what would ordinarily be footnotes by using consecutive (superscription) numbers within the text of each session; then I’ve grouped the actual notes at the end of the session for quick reference. For consistency’s sake, these notes are printed in the same smaller type throughout both volumes. Footnotes will be found “in place” only when they refer to a specific appendix in the same book. So for the most part, these approaches keep the body of each session free of interruptions between breaks.

The appendix idea worked well in both The Seth Material and Seth Speaks. Here in “Unknown” Reality the individual excerpt or session in an appendix, with whatever notes it may have, is usually pretty complete in itself. These pieces can be read at any time, but I prefer that the reader go over each one when it’s first mentioned in a footnote, just as he or she ought to check out all other reference material in order throughout both volumes.

I’ve noted the time every so often during each session to show how long it takes Jane to deliver a particular passage (and shortly I’ll explore further the time elements involved with the production of “Unknown” Reality). For obvious reasons I’ve deleted most of Seth’s instructions for punctuating his material, beyond leaving a few examples in place at the start of his Preface, or in an occasional session. But Seth is far short of overdoing such directions. Once in a while Jane or I recast his sentence structure for clarity’s sake, or we eliminate a repetitive phrase — for all of this is verbal work as opposed to prose work, which can be easily revised on the spot. Except for such changes the material is presented as received throughout both of these volumes. Whenever anything is deleted from a session — personal information, say — it’s always indicated; occasionally such material is summarized.

Like the other Seth books, then, each volume of “Unknown” Reality contains not only the Seth sessions, but Jane’s and my own ideas about them, as well as our notes on the circumstances surrounding their production.

The next four paragraphs contain some information on our publishing schedule that I’ll present as simply as I can. Originally I hadn’t planned on dealing with such material in these notes, but after talking it over, Jane and I agreed that it should be given here after all. There are various titles, section numbers, and dates to keep in mind, so these passages may take some rereading.

As I note in the Epilogue for this volume, Section 6 in Volume 2 contains the story of how we moved into our “hill house,” just outside Elmira, N.Y., a month before Seth completed that section — and his part in “Unknown” Reality as a whole — in April, 1975. But in October, 1974, long before our move from the two apartments we occupied in downtown Elmira, Jane started her Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book; that book is the sequel to Adventures in Consciousness, and is to be published this Fall (in 1976) by Prentice-Hall, Inc. Politics is also mentioned in the Epilogue to Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality, and my first session notes on it show up in Section 4, in the second volume.

We’d intended to publish Volume 1 before Politics, but since Jane finished her book before I could complete the notes for the two Seth books (I found it necessary to do many of the notes for both volumes together), we decided to publish Politics first instead. Our move to the hill house also cost me considerable working time on the manuscripts. So it’s obvious, then, that Politics jumps ahead of “Unknown” Reality as far as a strictly correct publishing chronology is concerned.

One can have a lot of fun with numbers. They can, for instance, be used to explore different perspectives of the same subject — in this case, time, the quality that’s just been under discussion. The two volumes of “Unknown” Reality contain 65 sessions. Jane delivered these for Seth over a period of a little more than 14½ months. This elapsed time includes more than a few weeks during which she gave no book dictation at all, of course, but I was curious to get an approximate idea of the number of hours she actually spent in producing the entire work.

Every so often I’ve thought of averaging Jane’s dictation time for Seth Speaks and Personal Reality in the same way, but haven’t done so. I’m somewhat puzzled to note, however, that her very short working times for the Seth books seem to be either ignored or taken for granted by practically everyone — or, perhaps, those factors just aren’t understood in terms of ordinary linear time. Maybe I’m alone in my interest here, for even Jane doesn’t express any great curiosity about the time she has invested in the Seth material; she just delivers it. But given her abilities, I think her speed of production is a close physical approach to, or translation of, Seth’s idea that basically all exists at once — that really there is no time, and that the Seth books, for example, are “there” to be had in final form for just the tuning in. (In Section 3 of this volume, Note 2 for Session 692 contains information on another way by which we can move closer to Seth’s idea of simultaneity from our physical reality, but that method grows out of material not discussed here.)

Since Jane began publishing the Seth material in 1970, she’s received many hundreds of calls and letters about her work. We’re very grateful for all of those communications (including the letters we haven’t answered yet), but I don’t recall this fantastic time element being mentioned in even one of them.

Do I think that Jane, in trance, could actually deliver a complete, book-length manuscript in just 45 hours? The question must be hypothetical, but I’m sure she could as far as having Seth’s material available is concerned; she’d need only the necessary physical strength. Even now, while speaking for Seth she can easily outtalk my writing capacity by many hours. The information from Seth would be there. The work produced would be different from the “same” work delivered over a longer time. Seth wouldn’t have our current daily activities to draw upon for some of his analogies, for instance, but in such cases I think he’d either call upon similar episodes from our pasts, or cast his material in different ways — which would yield the same results.

I think it important to periodically remind the reader of certain of Seth’s basic ideas throughout both volumes of “Unknown” Reality. As an example, I’ll continue with the subject of time — but Seth’s time now — and couple it with his notions of a durability that is at the same time spontaneous and simultaneous, as he’s explained to us more than once. The durability is achieved through constant expansion in terms of value fulfillment. Part of my paragraph of commentary following the 724th session, in Volume 2, fits in here: “As he [Seth] quite humorously commented in the 14th session for January 8, 1964, ‘… for you have no idea of the difficulties involved in explaining time to someone who must take time to understand the explanation.’ Yet Seth’s simultaneous time isn’t an absolute, for, as he also told us in that session: ‘While I am not affected by time on your plane, I am affected by something resembling time on my plane … To me time can be manipulated, used at leisure and examined. To me your time is a vehicle, one of several by which I can enter your awareness. It is therefore still a reality of some kind to me [my emphasis]. Otherwise I could not utilize it in any way whatsoever.’”

In the Seth books we’ve deliberately refrained from commenting upon the similarities that exist between Seth’s ideas and those of various religious, philosophical, and mystical doctrines from the Near, Middle, or Far East. This approach fits our natures, of course. Jane and I know that such correlations exist — indeed, we’d only be surprised if they didn’t. Others have often mentioned them to us, and we’ve done a little reading on Buddhism, Hinduism, Zen, and Taoism, for example, not to mention subjects like shamanism, voodooism, and obeah. It’s obvious, we think, that a book could be written comparing the Seth material with other systems of thought, whether religious or not, but Jane and I, being individualists, have chosen not to concentrate upon those areas. Nor is what I’m writing here meant to be taken as an attempt to put down other approaches to “basic” reality.

Although there are similarities, then, in our view there are vital differences, too, between Seth’s philosophy and that of many other organized systems. Jane and I prefer to think about the unities we find in our world as including religions, not being defined by them, and we think Seth stresses this. We go along in our own stubborn ways, knowing that our outlooks are rooted in the Western traditions of the world, but also knowing that there exist all about us these numerous other philosophies or systems, some of them many centuries old, that the human race has created to help it explain reality. Yet we feel no compulsion to intimately know the details of, say, Sufism or Brahmanism. (A simile I often think of here compares Eastern and Western life and thought with the right and left hemispheres of the brain; they’re separate, yet united; each half performs functions that complement and to some extent overlap those of the other, and together they operate as a whole.) But we dislike the idea of nirvana in Buddhism and Hinduism, which calls for the extinction or blowing out of individual consciousness, and its absorption into a supreme spirit, usually after a series of lives. And we object to the notion that “nature,” in those terms of linear time, has so arranged things that the individual has to pay a karmic debt in one life as the result of actions in a previous one. Why should nature punish anyone if it doesn’t punish anything? The realities of nirvana and karma are not ones that Jane and I want to create.

I’m more inclined to agree with what Seth told us in the 590th session in Chapter 22 of Seth Speaks: “You are not fated to dissolve into All That Is. The aspects of your personality as you presently understand them will be retained. All That Is is the creator of individuality, not the means of its destruction.” And whenever I read about conventional Eastern conceptions of a supreme spirit, I remember what Seth had to say in the 596th session in the Appendix of Seth Speaks: “I have used the term ‘expansion of consciousness’ here rather than the more frequently used ‘cosmic consciousness’ because the latter implies an experience of proportions not available to mankind at this time. Intense expansions of consciousness by contrast to your normal state may appear to be cosmic in nature, but they barely hint at those possibilities of consciousness that are available to you now, much less begin to approach a true cosmic awareness.”

In his laboratories, man thus has great opportunities to obtain preprogrammed answers, based on what he thinks he already knows; his exteriorized equipment can hardly produce anything else. (A scientist doesn’t call an atom of oxygen, or one of any other element, alive, let alone conscious. Yet a collection of certain atoms assembled into a human form calls itself alive — and vehemently denies the same status to identical atoms that have the misfortune to exist outside of that human framework.) But some of the reasons for our exceedingly poor understanding of the general human state are discussed by Seth in the material he’s given over the last decade, and I’m sure there is much more to come.

Here’s Seth from the 750th session, held on June 25, 1975, two months after he finished Volume 2. In it he not only sums up his motives in producing “Unknown” Reality, but comments on another one of his basic ideas that I think it important to stress every so often; this time, perception is involved. “The ‘Unknown’ Reality was written to give … individuals glimpses into alternate patterns of reality. It was meant to serve as a map that would lead, not into another objectified universe per se, but into inner roads of consciousness. These inner roads or strands of consciousness bring elements into play so that it becomes possible to realize that the content of a given objectified universe may actually be perceived quite differently. You are part of what you perceive. When you alter the focus of your perception you automatically change the objectified world. It is not simply that you perceive it differently while it remains the same, regardless of your experience. The act of perception itself helps form the perceived event and is a part of it.”

And what of Jane’s feelings about her relationship with Seth? The mechanics of her mediumship? Our idea at first was that she’d write her own introduction to accompany these notes, but finally she decided that wasn’t necessary; nor did she want to repeat much of the material she’s already covered in her own books. Instead, in March, 1976, she produced the following essay, which I consider to be an excellent summation of the combined inner and outer realities she experiences while speaking for Seth:

“The ‘Unknown’ Reality itself is a product of the unknown reality of the mind, of course, since I produced it entirely in a trance state, as Seth. In a way the two volumes are the products of an inner psychic ‘combustion’ — the spark that is lit in our world, as Seth’s reality strikes mine — or vice versa. For me, this is an accelerated state. I would compare it to a higher state of wakefulness rather than to the sleep usually associated with trance — but a different kind of wakefulness, in which the usual world seems to be the one that is sleeping. My attention is not blunted. It is elsewhere.

“Such sessions never wear me out. Instead, I’m often more refreshed than I was earlier. Usually I have little idea of time. As Seth I may speak for an hour, but when I ‘snap back’ I’ll look at the clock in surprise, thinking that perhaps 15 minutes have passed at most. The trance is not static, though. It has gradations and characteristics. These are almost impossible to explain, but the state isn’t always the same — it has peaks and valleys, psychological colorations and intensities that mark its nature.

“The trance state is characterized by a feeling of inexhaustible energy, emotional wholeness, and subjective freedom. At times Seth’s voice is very loud and powerful. Even in trance I’m aware of this, and I’m swept along in its energy. In the first years of my mediumship Seth’s voice and accent seemed very odd to me, whether I heard myself speaking for him during sessions or listened to tapes. But in the trance, what is known is known. Returning to my usual condition, the words that I’ve just spoken as Seth vanish in dreamlike fashion. Although I’ve read “Unknown” Reality since it was finished, and had looked portions of it over during the time of its production, it seems alien to me in the strangest fashion.

“When I’m Seth, I’m just a small part of his reality, maybe only the portion I can grasp, but I bask in that personified energy. When Seth turns his attention to people, addressing them or answering questions, then I sense an almost multidimensional appreciation of their worth and individuality. He understands the validity of each person, or salutes it, approaching people in an entirely different light than we do. That experience of his reaction to others leads me to suspect the existence of an emotional experience far more vivid than the one we know.

“We love to look ‘backward’ at our animal origins. We take it for granted that evolution in those terms is over, and here we are — aha, kings of the mountain. But maybe we’re just in the middle, sensing imperfectly the existence of other remote versions of ourselves that will appear in a ‘future’ too far ahead of us to know. Maybe I’m some distant ancestor of Seth’s in those terms, alive in my life but only a memory in his. But he insists there’s fresh action in the past; so if that’s the case, I’m still searching out my own paths.

“When I get this far in my own thinking, a peculiar acceleration seizes me. My body grows very relaxed, but my mind has a strange feeling of motion as if something I’m trying to comprehend is going past me too fast to follow; yet I keep trying to twirl faster myself to catch up. If one of my cells tried to comprehend my own subjective reality, it might feel the same way. I think that I’m alive in Seth’s subjective ‘body’ in the same way that one of my cells is alive in my physical body. Only I keep groping … and sensing events that my own reality can’t really understand.

“This may just be the conscious mind’s reaction as it tries to glimpse its own source. Perhaps when we try such feats we pause, figuratively speaking, on our conscious platforms, looking upward and downward at the same time. Like weightless spacemen we know who we are, but we aren’t sure of our position, which shifts psychologically in inner space. We grow momentarily dizzy, dazzled by an inner cosmos of selves and self-versions, and feel that we are traveling through some gigantic psyche that spawns selves the way space spawns stars.”

That energy will arouse in you your own abilities. It will lead you to insights and solutions that can be yours alone. It will put you in touch with the ground of your being — from which, eventually, all exultation and answers spring. My purpose is not to solve your problems for you, but to put you in touch with your own power. My purpose is not to come between you and your own freedom by giving you “answers,” even to the most tragic of problems. My purpose is to reinforce your own strength, for ultimately the magic of your being is well equipped to help you find fulfillment, understanding, exuberance, and peace.