“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The circumstances surrounding Jane’s delivery of Seth’s Preface, while she was in trance, are given in the 685th session for February 25, 1974, in Section 1. After a break midway through the session, Seth began the material below at 10:57 P.M. He always indicates each word, phrase, or sentence to be underlined. This time he also called out each paragraph as he went along, and some of the other punctuation; to show Seth’s own sense of organization on such occasions, I’ve left a few of his instructions in place in the first three paragraphs.)

New paragraph. (Long pause.) Some time ago¹ I suddenly appeared within your space and time. Since then I have spoken to many people. Period. This is my third book.² There would be nothing strange to anyone in any of this if I had been born into your world in a body of my own, in usual terms. Instead I began to express myself by speaking through Jane Roberts. Period. In all of this there has been a purpose, and part of that purpose lies in this present book.

New paragraph. Each individual is a part of the unknown reality. Because of my position, however, I am obviously more a part of it than most. My psychological awareness bridges worlds of which you are consciously aware, and others that seem, at least, to escape your notice. The woman through whom I speak found herself in an unusual situation, comma, for no theories — metaphysical, psychological, or otherwise — could adequately explain her experience. She was led to develop her own, therefore, and this book is an extension of certain ideas already mentioned in Adventures in Consciousness.³ To write that book, Jane Roberts drew on deep resources of energy.

Jane Roberts’s experience to some extent hints at the multidimensional nature of the human psyche and gives clues as to the abilities that lie within each individual. These are part of your racial heritage. They give notice of psychic bridges connecting the known and “unknown” realities in which you dwell.

So the book had a private beginning. Jane Roberts’s husband, Robert Butts, wondered about the death of his mother (on November 19, 1973). In a session (the 679th for February 4, 1974) he brought out some old photographs. Now: Life after death has usually been described quite in keeping with the old accepted ideas about one self, and limited concepts of personhood. I took that opportunity, however, to begin this book.

(Pause at 11:51 — then with much emphasis.) The fact is that in life you poise delicately and yet perfectly between realities, and after death you do the same. I used the opportunity, then, to explain the great freedom available to Robert Butts’s mother after death — but also to explain those elements of her reality present during life that had been closed to him consciously because of mankind’s concepts about the nature of the psyche. I comment now and then about photographs that belong to the Butts family [including Jane Roberts], yet any reader can look at old photographs and ask the same questions, applying what is said here to private experience. The “unknown” reality — you are its known equivalent (again, louder). Then know yourself. Your consciousness will expand as you become acquainted with these ideas.

1. Seth first announced his presence by name to Jane and me in the 4th session, held on December 8, 1963. See Chapter 1 of The Seth Material.

2. Seth’s two previous books are Seth Speaks and Personal Reality — but they’re also Jane’s too, of course. See the frontmatter for a list of her books as published by Amber-Allen Publishing, Inc. (To make the record complete, it should be noted that Jane’s first book on psychic phenomena was How to Develop Your ESP Power. It was published in hardcover and paperback editions in 1966 and 1974, respectively, by Frederick Fell Publishers, Inc., New York, N.Y. 10016. Then in 1976 it was issued in paperback by Pocket Books, New York, N.Y., 10020, under a new title: The Coming of Seth.)

3. Actually, Jane began the final draft of her manuscript for Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology, earlier this month (February, 1974). She’s worked out all of her themes for it in detail, however.