“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.

(“In fact,” she continued, “I’m embarrassed that Seth called me a mystic — a great one, I mean — like that. No matter whether it’s natural or not …” Rather reluctantly, she agreed to let me present that personal material here; but only, I think, because she understood my desire to give what I consider to be pertinent background material for the Seth books. Yet, at the same time, she could say to me: “I hope to go further into consciousness than anyone else ever has.” ¹

(When Seth gave us this information, the sessions had barely started. Yet we could relate to it at once; in this instance especially Seth’s insights “fit” Jane’s conscious knowledge and extended it in most interesting ways.

Besides normal reasons, he was psychically inclined, at a time when Jane was young and herself close to a past life. She sensed his deep and personal inner awareness. It confused and haunted him, since his inarticulateness applied also to thoughts within himself. He felt strongly but could not explain. In his solitary nature he came close to being a mystic, but he was unable to relate his personality as Joseph Burdo with the social world at large, or even to other members of the family. There was a block, regrettably. He felt strongly his connection with the universe as a whole and with nature as he understood it. But to him, nature did not include his fellow human beings. The solitariness that besieged him — because it did besiege him — is dangerous to any personality unless it comes after identification with the human race.

7. While writing poetry on the evening of September 9, 1963, Jane had her first consciously recognized psychic experience. [...] 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. Later Seth told us that Jane’s alteration of consciousness had represented his first attempt to make “formal” contact with her, although she wasn’t aware of it then.

[...] My real fascination, however, lies with what I call the greatly enhanced consciousness, or energy, that she displays in the sessions — and always I sense an even more powerful flow of that quality just beneath the surface of her delivery. [...]

[...] And to have at least some of our deepest desires and motivations brought so clearly to conscious awareness, through psychic means or any other way, was more than we’d thought possible in previous years. [...]

[...] For some months we’d known her death was coming, and so had arranged our affairs around that irrevocable event; I spent weeks preparing the final manuscript of Personal Reality for the publisher; Jane conducted her ESP class whenever she could, and worked on her two books, Adventures in Consciousness and Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time. [...]