“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 also presented the entire work in such a way that the events of our daily lives were intimately connected with his material, serving as personal examples of how his theories actually work in everyday experience. He hadn’t been delivering “Unknown” Reality for long, then, before I realized that I’d have to devise a system of presentation that would handle his material, my own notes (which I could see were going to be considerably longer than they are in Seth’s other books, Seth Speaks and The Nature of Personal Reality), excerpts from Jane’s ESP classes, appendixes, and anything else that might be included.

It isn’t necessary to repeat many more of the Introductory Notes for Volume 1 here, although I’ll ask the reader to review them in connection with the material presented below. But the most important thing about those notes, I think, is Jane’s own account of her subjective relationship with Seth.

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.

Seth often advances his ideas by weaving together several themes into a complex pattern in any given session, or throughout a body of material. This process can also result in a similar approach on my part when I discuss his dictation, so I’ll initiate a summary of Volume 1 by using four sources presented by Seth himself: a key passage from his Preface; the headings he gave for the three sections that comprise Volume 1, along with a few elaborations of my own; a brief description of the appendixes which I assembled over a period of time; and a passage from the 762nd session, in which, eight months after he’d finished “Unknown” Reality, Seth speaks further about his purposes in producing it.

Section 2: “Parallel Man, Alternate Man, and Probable Man: The Reflection of These in the Present, Private Psyche. Your Multidimensional Reality in the Now of Your Being” — Eight sessions dealing with the vast unknown origin of our species in a psychological past that by contrast makes evolutionary time look like yesterday.

This present book, Volume 2, goes on from there as Seth creates an intriguing thematic framework, and then invites us to “play along,” to join in and to discover the unknown reality for ourselves through a series of exercises geared to illuminate the inner structures upon which our exterior ones depend.

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.)

“Your final paragraphs are already there in the probability, now, that you have chosen. That probability belongs with the present you have now — yet you chose it from an infinite number of other realities. The books arose from probabilities, both yours and mine as well as Ruburt’s.

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.)

“In your terms — the phrase is necessary — the moment point, the present, is the point of interaction between all existences and reality. All probabilities flow through it, though one of your moment points may be experienced as centuries, or as a breath, in other probable realities of which you are a part.” Thus, just as a moment point can be explored indefinitely, so each newly arising question results in an ever-widening pool of inquiry.

As in Volume 1, notes are presented at session break times as always, but I’ve indicated the points of origin of what would ordinarily be footnotes by using consecutive (superscription) numbers within the text of each session. Then, I’ve grouped the actual notes at the end of the individual sessions for quick consultation. All such reference numbers are printed in the same small type throughout both volumes. Footnotes will be found “in place” only when they’re used to call attention to a specific appendix in the same book. For the most part, then, these approaches keep the body of each session free of interruptions between break designations.