“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.

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?

Also, Jane has long since completed The World View of Paul Cezanne: A Psychic Interpretation, which was published in 1977; and she’s finished The Afterdeath Journal of an American Philosopher: The World View of William James — both books growing out of the world-view material given by Seth in “Unknown” Reality.

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.

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.

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.