“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Then also, I remember what Seth said about being reckless in the pursuit of the ideal. (See the Introductory Notes.) I don’t know that I was that daring, but I was persistent despite the hesitations and misgivings. So along with Seth’s work, we tried to share our reality with the reader, and to provide a platform in time for knowledge that must basically straddle our ideas of time and reality alike.

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.)

We also think science is “objective” enough in its own terms of serial time and measurement, as it claims to be, but that eventually it must choose to look inward as thoroughly as it does outward. To us, much of the turmoil in the world results from our steadfast refusal to accept a major portion of our natural heritage. We project our inner knowledge “outward” in distorted fashion; thus on a global scale we thrash about with our problems of war, overpopulation, and dwindling natural resources, to name but a few.

According to Seth, each of us chose such a course at this time — but now, we think, a time of imperative change is necessary if we are to continue our progress as a species. A new blending of inner and outer consciousnesses — a new, more meaningful coalition of intellectual and intuitive abilities — will be the latest step in the process of “consciousness knowing itself,” as Seth has described it.

I don’t think our conventional social systems, including our scientific ones, are going to resolve our questions within Jane’s and my personal lifetimes. I’m not putting down our cultures and science either, since they very accurately reflect the collective lives and conditions that we’ve chosen to create. But Jane and I do want to know more; we’re sure that Seth can help us here.

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.

As I’ve joked with Jane more than once: “If there’s life after death, each of us in turn will find it out — including the nonbelievers. And if there isn’t — well, no one will ever know that. Either way, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about….” So in the meantime the search can be fun, and intriguing — even a passion — but at the same time, without absolutism or any Messianic drive to change the world.

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.