“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I asked her about her childhood feelings, in line with Seth’s description of her mystical nature in the 679th session. Jane told me that during those years she’d had no idea that she might be anything so esoteric as a “mystic.” She was simply herself, and her sense of self, with her individual abilities and appreciation of the world she created and reacted to, grew in a very natural manner as she matured. Through her involvement with the Catholic church, she became aware of the quality called “mysticism” in connection with the saints of that church — but still she had no idea of attributing such a quality to herself. Her desire, her drive, was to write.

“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.

(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.

[...] Jane had begun delivering the Seth material late in 1963, and soon afterwards Seth started developing his ideas on probabilities.¹ Many times while looking at the snapshots since then I’d found myself speculating about the probable realities surrounding their two young subjects. [...] [And added later: At the time, I had no idea that my questioning would trigger a new Seth book.²]

Ruburt’s nonconformance took the larger framework of unconventional ideas. [...] At about this time (tapping the photo) Ruburt sat on the lap of an adult man on the front porch, and neighbors duly reported this — the idea being that sexual depravity could be involved.

[...] If he went spontaneously forward in mystical experience, then, given his ideas, it threatened the conventional acceptance of his art. Conventional ideas of art and writing, upon which the old framework, now, was dependent, no longer fit.

[...] It was a massive one, lasting at least two hours, astonishing her with the “barrage” of new ideas she discovered while immersed in it. During part of that time her consciousness left her body; and during it she produced through automatic writing a manuscript called The Physical Universe As Idea Construction. [...]