“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(April, 1976. In this appendix I’ve put together some material on mysticism from Jane, Seth, and myself. I wrote the first tentative notes for it shortly after the 679th session was held, in February, 1974, with the idea of adding to them later if necessary. As events worked out, Seth was halfway through Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality before I realized that these supplementary notes would work well as the first appendix in the first volume. The notes may have their own kind of order, but unlike most appendix material aren’t presented in a chronological sequence. As in the Introductory Notes, I want to stress Jane’s role as the creative artist, disseminating her personal view of a larger inner reality, and her intuitive and conscious comprehension of at least some aspects of that reality; for such understanding can easily elude our Western-oriented, materialistic, technological outlook.

(Since Jane began delivering the Seth material, I’ve become more and more interested in questions about the origins of creative [meaning artistic] endeavors. When we start looking for such beginnings in ordinary terms, we usually end up reaching back into the subject’s childhood. But, paradoxically, the origins aren’t to be found there, either, or grasped in regular terms, for according to Seth they’d lie outside the reach of physical life. Without going into Seth’s ideas that time is simultaneous, or that any endeavor is creative, the kinds of origins I’m discussing here wouldn’t have any beginning or end. More likely than not, they’d be chosen by the personality before birth, or outside the physical state.

Even in his poetry, before our work, Ruburt’s energy led him way beyond “himself” at certain times. He tried to hold himself down because, he felt, the energy was so strong that allowed freedom in almost any direction, it would bring him into conflict with the mores and ways of other people.

(Jane often enjoys being up and alone in the early hours of the day. She rises before dawn and makes herself “a simple quick breakfast” — just so she can read, make some notes, and watch the sky lightening outside the kitchen window. She listens to the first songs of the birds. The telephone is quiet. And, as she just wrote for me, on April 3, 1976, “I always feel an odd, right, somehow sturdy satisfaction, as if someone should be up to watch the day come; and it’s me.”

(The night before I’d been working on these notes, and we talked about mysticism, among other things. Because of our discussion, Jane rose early that morning and produced several pages of material. When I got up I found within her output the paragraphs presented below. They make an excellent ending for this appendix. Although she begins by once again expressing doubts, or at least qualifications, about her mystical status, I think her comprehension that she’s part of the day, of the earth, and of time, is surely a description of her independent pursuit of the mystical way. Jane wrote:)

“The idea of the priestess used to fascinate me, before my own involvement in our sessions. But I thought of a priestess-poetess, mixing this with the idea of the mistress when I met Rob. Wherever we live is significant to me; a privileged place; our domestic platform in the universe.

“I was going back to bed when my last lines suddenly reminded me that I still feel the way I did when I was a young girl; that some part of the dawn does come for me; personally; and that to some extent time didn’t exist before I was born. My birth brought a certain element into the world that wasn’t there before. And with me, I brought time. This happens when anyone is born, but most people don’t feel it — or don’t seem to … Together all of us on earth form time and contribute to its design and to history. This happens whenever one of us is born or dies. I guess I’ve always felt that way.