“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

We have so much to learn about our inner and outer worlds that once an attempt is made to discuss those large issues, a host of questions arise. What I for one finally get down on paper, then, must be very incomplete when compared to what I don’t write, or don’t know. Jane and I, for instance, have never particularly cared for the term “ESP,” or extrasensory perception (my emphasis), since to us it implies misleading conceptions about certain inner abilities. We hardly think those attributes are “extra” at all, although they’re obviously more developed or consciously available in some individuals than in others — but then, so is a “gift” for music, or baseball or whatever. (I’ll add here that Jane calls her class an ESP class for the obvious reason that the term has become so well known that most people understand something of its implied meaning.)

After making those points, however, I note with some amusement that I find it difficult indeed to believe that many millions of people must wait for a handful of their “superior” peers — philosophers, scientists, psychologists, parapsychologists — to tell them it’s all right to believe in at least a few of the inner abilities that each of us possesses, to whatever degree. Obviously, numerous individuals simply refuse to wait for the official light of recognition to shine forth.

Whatever or whoever Seth is, or whatever the nature of the Seth-Jane relationship, we long ago decided that we could learn from it. No need to dogmatically insist upon reincarnation as being a “fact,” or upon the existence of Seth’s counterparts or the families of consciousness. In the material as a whole there are bound to be significant clues as to the nature of the human animal: creative clues that can’t help but enlighten us in many — and sometimes unexpected — ways. I deal with some of the material we’ve acquired about the Seth-Jane relationship in Appendix 18 for Session 711, in Section 4; but here I want to stress our overall interest in knowledge, whatever that knowledge may be, and wherever it may lead us.

But if Seth-Jane are at all right, then consciousness is more than encompassing enough to embrace all that we are, and everything that each of us can even remotely conceive of doing or being. Try as we might, we’ll not exhaust or annihilate consciousness: Whatever we accomplish as people will still leave room for — indeed, demand — further ramifications and development. And in the interim we can always look at nature with its innocent, spontaneous order to sustain us. We can at least observe, and enjoy, the behavior of other species with whom we share the world.