“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

Seth himself said nothing about publishing “Unknown” Reality in one volume, two volumes, or even more, while he was producing it. He referred to it as one unit until the very last session, the 744th, when he said in answer to a question I asked “The Seth material is endless. I organize it for your benefit. If you want to divide it into two volumes, that is fine. You will find several points where this can be done …” In our final view, however, the obvious point of division is also the best one: three sections in each volume. I’ll note a little more about this natural point of separation in the Epilogue of this book.

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.

Ruburt has read your letter. So has Joseph. I am aware of its contents. We have no organization yet of an exterior kind, so there are no secretaries to take dictation, no middlemen — or women — to write flowery, prepackaged replies.

Ruburt and Joseph, or Jane and Rob if you prefer, are private people. They also have a kind of one-to-one relationship with the universe. This particular quality means that they resist forming any kind of organization, even though such an organization might help in answering the mail. I am, therefore, dictating this letter. While it will be sent to many of you, it is written to each of you, and I only regret that I cannot go into your aspirations, challenges, and problems on a more individual basis.