“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

In my other books I used many accepted ideas as a springboard to lead readers into other levels of understanding. Here, I wish to make it clear that this book⁴ will initiate a journey in which it may seem that the familiar is left far behind. Yet when I am finished, I hope you will discover that the known reality is even more precious, more “real,” because you will find it illuminated both within and without by the rich fabric of an “unknown” reality now seen emerging from the most intimate portions of daily life. Give us a moment. (Pause at 11:35.) Your concepts of personhood are now limiting you personally and en masse, and yet your religions, metaphysics, histories, and even your sciences are hinged upon your ideas of who and what you are. Your psychologies do not explain your own reality to you. They cannot contain your experience. Your religions do not explain your greater reality, and your sciences leave you [just] as ignorant about the nature of the universe in which you dwell.

These institutions and disciplines are composed of individuals, each restrained by limiting ideas about their own private reality; and so it is with private reality that we will begin and always return, period. These ideas in this book are meant to expand the private reality of each reader. They may appear esoteric or complicated, yet they are not beyond the reach of any person who is determined to understand the nature of the unknown elements of the self, and its greater world.

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.

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.)