“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.

(As soon as Seth mentioned Jane’s “deeply mystical nature” in the 679th session, I thought of some personal material he’d given us six months earlier. I’ve slightly rearranged excerpts from that session for presentation here:)

“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.

[...] “I’ve got that feeling again,” Jane said, after she’d come out of a deep trance. [...]

(From Seth’s delivery following last break, I’ve deleted less than two short sentences of very personal material. [...]

[...] From Seth and ourselves we’ve accumulated much unpublished material about Jane’s symptoms and attendant matters. [...]

[...] Six months before starting “Unknown” Reality, however, he made a few remarks that I’ve applied ever since to life in our physical reality: “Each person chooses his or her parents, accepting in terms of environment and heredity a bank of characteristics, attitudes, and abilities from which to draw in physical life. [...]