“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(In the 82nd session, which was held on the evening of August 27, 1964, Seth said: “When man realizes that he, himself, creates his personal and universal environment in concrete terms, then he can begin to create a private and universal environment much superior to the [present] one, that is the result of haphazard and unenlightened constructions.

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.

Seth told us ahead of time, of course, that “Unknown” Reality would follow an intuitive and inner organization rather than a linear one, and that this writing method would itself arouse the creative, revelatory characteristics of the psyche. Material on any given subject may start, go on for a while, then either stop almost in mid-sentence or “evolve” into another topic. Yet underneath, the books ride securely upon rhythms that reflect the psyche’s deep resources.

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?

Yet we think now that such extensive notes have served their purposes for Seth’s material, at least for some time, so those books-in-the-works will carry minimum notes — as they do, say, in Seth Speaks. For one thing, as I write this Epilogue, Seth has finished The Nature of the Psyche, and has already begun still another book. Psyche, as Jane and I call it, contains some excellent new material, such as Seth’s first discussions of sex — including lesbianism, homosexuality, and bisexuality — as well as other related subjects that we know, from our correspondence, to be of intense general concern. By using simple session notes only, we can get that next book to the public in a minimum of time, and it should be published shortly after this second volume of “Unknown” Reality — perhaps within just a few months.

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.)

That wait could be a very long one. Who is to help initiate meaningful changes in our psychological and social orders? Surely Jane feels the necessity to turn aside from the selected dogmas of our time. For to her, and to me, our world’s present definitions of personality are as limited as the conventional meaning implied by the term ESP. We hope that Jane’s work can help expand such concepts.

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.

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.

For in closing, I’d like to return to one of my favorite happenings: the migration of geese. I wrote the following notes in October 1975, some seven months after Jane and I had moved into our “new” house:

“One late-afternoon gaggle reached nearly from horizon to horizon, in three long and very noisy V-formations. And always, one bird led each V, with the two sides of the bird ‘lettering’ trailing back quite unevenly — wobbling, flexing, shifting. What free sociable claques, I thought. Amazing, the way their honking carried back to Jane and me as we stood in the driveway. We watched the geese fly toward the hills on the far side of the valley; we could still hear them even when they’d become practically invisible.”

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?