“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“This is our main message to the world, and this is the next line in man’s conceptual development, which will make itself felt in all fields, and in psychiatry perhaps as much as any.”

In one way or another all of Seth’s books are elaborations of that basic message, stated nine months after his sessions with us began in December 1963. It should be obvious that the two volumes of “Unknown” Reality are further ramifications of that thesis, for here Seth shows us the usually invisible psychological dimensions that underlie the known world. He reveals the very structure upon which our free will rests: for if events were immutable or fated, no free will would be possible.

The two volumes of “Unknown” Reality hardly tie truth up in neat packages, though, so that after completing them the reader can claim to know all of the answers. In fact, Seth’s material always raises more questions to stimulate the intellect and intuitions, and these two books are no exception. In a sense, they are incomplete and complicated at times, with new terms, for the unknown reality they attempt to describe will, I fear, always elude us to some extent, and new terms are needed as old ones become stereotyped and worn.

It seems clear now that Seth knew all along that this would happen. The creative explosions begun with these books still erupt, for “Unknown” Reality does seem to have a life of its own, one that defies definition, and that even now serves as a springboard for new psychic and creative experience. Talk about probable realities! This manuscript seems to possess dimensions that place it — and Jane and me — in many probabilities at once. As I type its pages for the final time, I’m back at our old Water Street apartments, and in our new “hill house” at once; I’m referring to 1975 sessions and recording Seth’s dictation on his latest book as well. Sometimes I feel like saying: “One reality at a time, please.”

Long before I finished my part of “Unknown” Reality, Seth and Jane had started their next book: The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression. I recorded those sessions, of course, while keeping up with my own work. Jane finished her Psychic Politics, and began some new poetry and world-view material. She was taking calls from readers in all parts of the country, trying to keep up with the mail, participating in an occasional radio interview, and, for most of that time, conducting her classes. And oh, yes, both of us also did a lot of ordinary living, such as moving and getting settled in our new home and entertaining friends now and then. Yet none of those “outside” events were fully removed from “Unknown” Reality. They found their way into the pages, the sessions, somehow, even if only by feel or inference. For how could any one event not jostle all of the others in lives so closely bound?

No one, whether that individual is a psychic, a mystic, a writer, a poet, or even if he or she combines all of those qualities (as I think Jane does), can encompass all of the incredible differences within the human species. I believe that thick, sprawling works like “Unknown” Reality offer some important answers, but beyond that it’s up to the multidimensional, multitudinous, over four billion multinational individuals on this planet to follow their own intuitions and seek answers in their personal ways. Lots of those people will never hear of the Seth material — nor, as Seth himself has said, will they ever need to — but then, Jane and I know that some will, and so we proffer what we can.

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.

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.

In its way the nighttime visitation was even more mysterious, for that time I looked up at a starlit but moonless sky that didn’t have a cloud in sight — and heard this multitudinous sound moving across it. The night was chilly. Jane was sleeping. All of the qualities of the birds’ flight were heightened for me by its very invisibility, for while I actually saw no geese at all, that sound was everywhere. And what guided those creatures, I wondered — magnetic lines of force, genes, innate knowledge — or what? And I knew that no objective reasoning processes alone could explain their magnificent flight.

Somehow the twice-yearly, north-and-south migrations of the geese have become symbols for me of the known and unknown qualities of life — sublime and indecipherable at the same time, enduring yet fleeting, and almost outside of the range of human events. For me, those migrations have become portents of the seasons and of the earth itself as it swings around “our” sun in great rhythms. The one consciousness (mine) stands in its body on the ground and looks up at the strange variations of itself represented by the geese. And wonders. In their own ways, do the geese wonder also? What kind of hidden interchanges between species take place at such times? If the question could he answered, would all of reality in its unending mystery lie revealed before us?