“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I reminded Jane that since she belonged to no religion now [having left the Roman Catholic Church when she was 19 years old], her mystical nature would choose other avenues of expression than religious ones; as in these sessions, for instance. Perhaps, I suggested, it would turn out that one of her main endeavors would be to enlarge the boundaries of “ordinary” mystical experience itself, to show it operating outside of accepted religious frameworks. I added that within those religious boundaries, mystics across the centuries and throughout the world have given voice to the same ideas in almost the same words, and that as an “independent” mystic Jane was in a position to approach the situation from a freer; more individual standpoint: She would be able to add fresh insights to what is certainly one of the species’ all-pervasive, unifying states. For the mystical way surely speaks about our origins. ²

(She hasn’t undergone a classical religious conversion of the kind William James describes in his The Varieties of Religious Experience,⁴ yet more than once she’s known her own forms of ecstasy, or deep alteration of consciousness, or illumination — whatever one chooses to call such states. From two perspectives she rather briefly describes one such episode, which actually lasted several hours, in her Dialogues, and in Adventures in Consciousness.⁵

(At about the time that personal session was held, we’d been reading a book on the lives of some of the well-known mystics of the past. Most of them had functioned within religious frameworks, and Jane and I saw how their various environments had given color and shape to their transcendent experiences. [I would add that in turn those experiences obviously enriched those environments.] But in spite of Seth’s material, Jane told me: “I’m not a mystic. I don’t think of myself as one at all — not like those church people.” She smiled. “I don’t have a vision every time I want to do something important.

(Even so, through her school years Jane didn’t particularly talk about her thoughts, or the abilities she sensed within herself — not with her mother, the priests she came to know well [and who didn’t approve in any case if she carried her religious devotion, her mysticism, “too far”], or even with her grandfather. Jane wrote about her inner world instead. She had boyfriends, but no dreams of marriage, children, or keeping house. Essentially, then, she “felt alone” in her constant desire to write.

[...] The religious background was there. [...]

The mystical went underground, reappearing as science fiction.⁶ Again, in the social and religious background of the child, unconventional mental or physical actions could bring penalties. [...]

[...] His questioning mind was exercised originally as he began to examine religious beliefs. [...]