“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Let me quickly recap a few more facts about the production of this work. Seth himself always referred to “Unknown” Reality as one unit until we reached the last session. He divided the manuscript into six sections of varying lengths. There are no chapters per se. As Seth explained in the 743rd session: “This book had no chapters [in order] to further disrupt your accepted notions of what a book should be. There are different kinds of organization present, however, and in any given section of the book, several levels of consciousness are appealed to at once.”

Seth’s Preface is in Volume 1, of course, and it too should be studied again; to me, such acts of referral between the two volumes help the reader mentally unite them.

After I touch upon the contents of Volume 1, I’ll have the freedom to move into some other topics that occurred to Jane and me as I put Volume 2 together — subjects regarding the Seth phenomenon itself, for example. I also want to present a few passages from both regular and private (or “deleted”) sessions that were held before, during, or after Seth-Jane’s actual production of “Unknown” Reality in its entirety. At least some of Jane’s other books will be mentioned occasionally.

First, though, I’ll explain that in sessions Seth refers to Jane by her male entity name, Ruburt — and that he does so (as I quote him in Appendix 18) simply because “the given entity identifies itself more with the so-called male characteristics than with the female.” He also addresses me by my entity name, which is Joseph.

To me, some of the most important material in Volume 1 is Jane’s information on her sensing of other neurological pulses as they’re connected with probable events, and how she picked up those pulses by bypassing her direct, or ordinary neurological impact. See her work in appendixes 4 and 5. Seth also discussed such neurological changeovers in Session 685, among others. I think this kind of material offers a rich source for future scientific investigation.

“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.”

I also felt that the chronology of presentation for both Seth’s and Jane’s books was being distorted: Because I was so slow in finishing my work on Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality, Jane published her Psychic Politics first, for example, when the reverse order should have prevailed. After all, I told myself innumerable times, these were Seth’s and Jane’s books, not mine. I wasn’t hesitant about recognizing my own role in helping Jane’s psychic abilities show themselves in a consistent way (as, say, in intuitively devising the session format for the presentation of the Seth material). But that recognition didn’t make me feel any better.

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.)

The whole adventure has certainly been a learning experience, one demanding a kind of forbearance that neither Jane nor I could have really anticipated. If the waiting until I finished with Volume 2 has been difficult for me, it’s been doubly so for Jane, since by nature she’s much more spontaneous and quick than I am. Yet the wait itself was creative. As I show below, putting this Volume 2 together has represented a process of discovery for me — just as I hope studying it will for the reader.

It seemed that each time I searched through all of those unpublished sessions (covering well over a decade) for just the right supplementary material, I found something new. More often than not, this made me redo my own notes in unanticipated ways — always a creative challenge that was most enjoyable, and yet, paradoxically, one that at times was very frustrating. Such episodes often caused me to take much longer to produce finished work. I learned a patience that I hadn’t suspected was possible for me. For this patience, employed in conjuring up thoughts and images through words, was objectively and subjectively quite different in quality from that which I was so used to using in producing painted images. I could feel my mind and abilities, using either words or pictures, stretch as a result.

Seth himself helped me out more than once — and others can find his material here useful in many situations. From the 751st session for June 30, 1975, which was held a couple of months after he’d finished his part of the long project:

I used that information of Seth’s many times while working with “Unknown” Reality. Even so, I learned that on such a long-term project it’s easy to lose that acute sense of what one really wants to do and show — but I also learned how to constantly renew my focus. This presented me with what seemed like an endless series of challenges, yet I discovered again and again that I enjoyed them: Each time I sat down to work, whether on the most routine short note or the most complicated appendix, I searched for that particular, personal sense of intense concentration on the matter at hand. And each time I achieved it I experienced once more that complete inner and outer, mental and physical, involvement in which time was often significantly negated. These were actual, felt episodes during which I rose above those frustrations mentioned earlier. (I’ve often wondered how much one’s ordinary bodily aging processes are either slowed or superseded during such periods of great focus.)

Now, Jane and I also see much more clearly how our respective characteristics contribute to our joint work. Without Jane’s psychic ability and spontaneity there would be no Seth sessions or books, as I tell her often. Then she tells me that without my persistence and diligence, the Seth material might not have been recorded or correlated, or might exist in a different form entirely. I wonder.

But some others, according to Seth, are uneasy with Jane’s mental independence. In a personal session given for us in 1977, he said: “Some [people] do not want my authority questioned. (Humorously:) They think that if they had their own Supersoul, they would have far better sense than Ruburt; and they would use me as if I were a magic genie. They are afraid that Ruburt might question me out of existence….” He went on to say that such individuals didn’t understand that Jane’s questioning nature fired the sessions’ onset to begin with, and is somewhat responsible for the production of his work and books, as well as her own.

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: