“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.

As far as we can see, Seth’s reincarnational, counterpart, and probable selves, and his families of consciousness, suggest the varied, complicated structure of human personality — and hint of the invisible psychological thickness that fills out the physical event of the self in time.

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.)

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.

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.

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?