“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(We did have a few “deleted” sessions for ourselves. Jane also kept her ESP class going, and within that spontaneous format she often spoke for Seth, or sang in Sumari,¹ her trance language. The break in book dictation gave me time to begin attending class regularly, and I plan to continue doing so. And when I began sitting in on class, I discovered anew that its loose structure served as a catalyst for certain little psychic events that I find most enjoyable: Tuesday night is class night, and often such an experience takes place as I rest for half an hour late that afternoon. I record each episode [no matter when I have it]. Sometimes I make a drawing also, and use that to supplement my description of the event in class.

(Just as I had some small psychic adventures during our time off from “Unknown” Reality, Jane did too. One of hers that I’ll mention here is related to published material. During the night following the arrival of that first copy of Personal Reality, while lying quietly beside me in an altered state of consciousness, Jane received information of how “the ancients paralyzed the air.” It could then be walked upon and manipulated in various other ways. She woke me up to tell me about the experience, and to remind her to write an account of it the next day. She couldn’t identify its source, except to say that she hadn’t been dreaming. At the breakfast table, I told her I thought the material was connected to the sessions in Personal Reality on the interior sound, light, and electromagnetic values “around or from which” the physical image forms. Involved here also, I added, were certain ideas in her novel The Education of Oversoul Seven.²

(I took the sign of migration as a good omen, though, for the circumstances of the flight were strongly reminiscent of those described at the beginning of the 687th session, in Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality. It had been raining then, too, on that day last March — and as I wrote at the time, in some half-romantic fashion I’ve hooked up the flights of geese with Jane’s and my work on the Seth books. I’m still surprised that I’ve done so, for whatever reasons; but we’re ready to dig in for a winter’s work.

(As we sat waiting for the session at 8:50 Jane felt a little nervous; she often does after a layoff from book dictation. But she laughed, as she has before in such cases: “I just want to get it — the beginning — over with.” At 8:55, moving closer to that familiar dissociated state, approaching that psychological bridge which serves as a common meeting ground for Seth and herself she announced that she felt “a rather generalized idea of what Seth will say on the book stuff.” Less clear were some data about herself but she thought Seth would cover all of that along with his material on “Unknown” Reality. “I guess we’ll start out with the book….”

Again, all of these code systems⁵ are interrelated. In the same way, the private psyche contains within it hints and glimpses of other alternate realities. These operate as secondary codes, so to speak, beneath the existence that you officially recognize. Such secondary systems can tell you much about the potentials of human reality, those that are latent but can at any time be “raised” to primary importance. Such secondary systems also point toward the probable developments possible for individuals or species.

In your terms they did not have [an overall] purpose, yet their purpose was simply to be. Their main points of consciousness were elsewhere, in another kind of reality, while their physical manifestations were separate. Their primary focuses of consciousness were scarcely aware of the bodies they had created. Yet even those bodies learned, in quotes now, “through experience,” and began to “awaken,” to become aware of themselves, to discover time, or to create it. Period.

Now in the case of an animal who hibernates, the body is in the same state. But in the greater hibernation of your own experience, the body as a whole becomes inoperable. The cells within you obviously die constantly. The body that you have now is not the one that you had 10 years ago; its physical composition has died completely many times since your birth, but, again, your consciousness bridges those gaps (with gestures). They could be accepted instead, in which case it would seem to you that you were, say, a reincarnated self at age 7 (intently), or 14 or 21. The particular sequence of your own awareness follows through, however. In basic terms the body dies often, and as surely as you think it dies but once in the death you recognize. On numerous occasions it physically breaks apart, but your consciousness rides beyond those “deaths.” You do not perceive them. The stuff of your body literally falls into the earth many times, as you think it does only at the “end of your life.”

Again, your own consciousness triumphantly rides above those deaths that you do not recognize as such. In your chosen three-dimensional existence, however, and in those terms, your consciousness finally recognizes a death. From the outside it is nearly impossible to pinpoint that intersection of consciousness and the seeming separation from the body. There is a time when you, as a consciousness, decide that death will happen, when in your terms you no longer bridge the gap of minute deaths not accepted.

(Pause at 10:43, during a strong delivery.) Here consciousness decides to leave the flesh, to accept an official¹⁴ death. You have already chosen a context however, and it seems that that context is inevitable. It appears, then, that the body will last so long and no longer. The fact remains that you have chosen the kind of consciousness that identifies with the flesh for a certain period of time. Other species of consciousness — of a different order entirely, and with a different rhythm of experience — would think of a life in your terms as a day, and have no trouble bridging that gap between apparent life, death, and new life.

Some individuals find themselves with memories of other lives, which are other days to the soul. Such persons then become aware of a greater consciousness reaching over those gaps, and realize that earthly experience can contain [among other things] a knowledge of existence in more than one body. Inherently then consciousness, affiliated with the flesh, can indeed carry such comprehensions. The mind of man as you know it shows at least the potential ability for handling a kind of memory with which you are usually not acquainted. This means that even biologically the species is equipped to deal with different sequences of time, while still manipulating within one particular time scheme. This also implies a far greater psychological richness — quite possible, again, within corporal reality — in which many levels of relationships can be handled. Such inner knowledge is inherent in the cells, and in ordinary terms of evolution is quite possible as a “future” development.

The unknown reality: Much of that reality is unknown simply because your beliefs close you off from your own knowledge. The reaches of your own consciousness are not limited. Because you accept the idea of a straight-line movement of time, you cannot see before or after what you think of as your birth or death,* yet your greater consciousness is quite aware of such experience. Ideally it is possible not only to remember “past” lives, but to plan future ones now. In greater terms, all such lives happen at once. Your present neurological structure makes this seem impossible, yet your inner consciousness is not so impeded.

Think back to yesterday. Try to remember what you did when you got up; what you wore. Attempt to follow the sequence of your activities from the time you awakened until you went to sleep. Then flesh in the details. Try to recall your feelings at all of those times. Most of you will be lucky to get this far. Those who do, go even further and try to recall the daydreams you might have had also. Try to remember what stray thoughts came into your mind.

As you become more expert at it, then purposely do something else at the same time — a physical activity, for instance. When most of you begin this exercise it will almost seem as if you were a sleepwalker yesterday. The precise, fine alignment of senses with physical activity will seem simply lost; yet as you progress the details will become clear, and you will find that you can at least hold within your mind certain aspects of yesterdays reality while maintaining your hold in today.

In those terms, Ruburt started from scratch as a member of your society who finally threw aside, as you did [Joseph], the current frameworks of belief. For some time he was simply between belief systems, discarding some entirely, accepting portions of others; but mainly he was a pioneer — and this while carrying the largely unrealized, basic belief of society that you cannot trust the self …

(In his material above, concerning Jane’s search for newer, larger frameworks of belief once she began to dispense with her old “comforting” ideas, Seth very lucidly dealt with certain aspects of the role she’s chosen for this life. However, I want to emphasize here the emotional terms of Jane’s search — and state that at times those qualities have been very difficult for her to contend with. To some degree I’ve been involved in many changes of belief also, but I’m a participator in the development of the Seth Material, not its originator; the pressures and challenges weren’t — aren’t — as demanding. [With a humor born out of many a struggle, however, I note that it isn’t easy to give up certain cherished old beliefs, even when they’re demonstrably wrong, they may fit the personality all too well…. ]

10. This material immediately reminded me that before the session tonight Jane and I had discussed Seth’s promise to answer the two questions I’d posed for him before sessions 698–99, in Volume 1. The question of interest here (I summarized them both in the notes following the 699th session) had to do with my inability to comprehend an “unconscious” species state. Not that I thought Seth was going out of his way to deal with such concepts tonight, but by the time he was through with his material on the sleepwalkers, I thought he’d considered at least one possible facet of my inquiry.

The 699th session, in Volume 1, dealt in part with dream images and subjective dream “photographs.” I used Note 1 for that session to insert one of my favorite Jane poems: My Dreaming Self. She wrote it in 1965, a year and a half or so after beginning the Seth material. Now I can add that at the time Jane actually wrote two poems on dreaming; I’ve been saving the second one for use in Volume 2.

12. And added two weeks or so later: I see connections between the “centuries of inactivity” that Seth describes in this (708th) session, and certain unique psychic abilities of Jane’s — namely, those involving “massiveness” and “long sound.” In Volume 1, see not only Session 681 between 10:22 and 11:47 for data on one of her massive experiences, but that session’s accompanying Appendix 3. Then in this section of Volume 2, see both Note 9 and Appendix 19 for the 712th session, concerning material on Jane’s long-sound trances; during one of these it could theoretically take her a week — or a century — of our time to pronounce just one syllable of one word.