“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

As Seth continued dictation I was fired by his purpose to make the unknown elements of human life at least partially visible — an audacious goal, I thought — and I tried to do my part in recording all such disclosures as they appeared in our lives and were reflected in the experiences of our friends and students.

“In my other books I used many accepted ideas as a springboard to lead readers into other levels of understanding. Here, I wish to make it clear that [“Unknown” Reality] will initiate a journey in which it may seem that the familiar is left far behind. Yet when I am finished, I hope you will discover that the known reality is even more precious, more ‘real,’ because you will find it illuminated both within and without by the rich fabric of an ‘unknown’ reality now seen emerging from the most intimate portions of daily life…. Your concepts of personhood are now limiting you personally and en masse, and yet your religions, metaphysics, histories, and even your sciences are hinged upon your ideas of who and what you are. Your psychologies do not explain your own reality to you. They cannot contain your experience. Your religions do not explain your greater reality, and your sciences leave you just as ignorant about the nature of the universe in which you dwell.

“In Seth Speaks I tried to describe certain extensions of your own reality in terms that my readers could understand. In The Nature of Personal Reality, I tried to extend the boundaries of individual existence as it is usually experienced … to give the reader hints that would increase practical, spiritual and physical enjoyment and fulfillment in daily life. Those books were dictated by me in a more or less straight narrative style. In ‘Unknown’ Reality I went further, showing how the experiences of the psyche splash outward into the daylight, so to speak. I hope that [in those two books] through my dictation and through Ruburt’s and Joseph’s experiences, the reader can see the greater dimensions that touch ordinary living, and sense the psyche’s greater magic. ‘Unknown’ Reality required much more work on Joseph’s part, and that additional effort in itself was a demonstration that the psyche’s events are very difficult to pin down in time. Seemingly its action goes out in all directions…. As Joseph did his notes, it became apparent that some events … seemed to have no beginning or end.”

Jane insisted that the notes were important, as a constant reminder to the reader that psychic or inner events happen in the context of daily life. Sometimes I thought she was simply being kind in so reassuring me. Seth too agreed that the notes, appendixes, and other additions were pertinent. He also stressed that our plan to divide the work was intuitively correct, and based on legitimate inner knowledge. This cheered me considerably, of course. (However, the decision to publish in two volumes, made when “Unknown” Reality was almost finished, caused me to rewrite most of my original notes for it with that new presentation in mind.)

In my notes introducing Volume 1, I wrote about placing the basic “artistic ideas” embodied in the Seth material at our conscious, aesthetic, and practical service in daily life. That’s really what Seth’s work is all about, in my opinion. Such an endeavor essentially involves the pursuit of an ideal, and represents our attempts to give physical and mental shape to the great inner, creative commotion of the universe that each person intuitively feels. Of course Jane and I want Seth’s ideas and our own to touch responsive reflexes within others; then each individual can use the material in his or her own expression of that useful ideal, letting it serve to stimulate inner perceptions.

Certainly Seth is saying that Jane’s books (and his) represent her acknowledgment of and search for an ideal. So do my own efforts in life. (See Seth’s material on “ideals set in the heart of man” in sessions 696–97 for Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality.) Apropos of such concepts, I’ll close these introductory notes by quoting from a personal session Seth gave for Jane and me, in which he reiterates the importance of the individual and the pursuit of the ideal. Seth initiated the following passages by talking to me about “the safe universe” that each person can create, and live within. Although his words were directed to me, they have a broad general application: