“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

For ourselves, and even considering Seth’s concept of “camouflage” (in Volume 1, see Note 3 for Appendix 11), Jane and I certainly believe that our physical existences and mental experiences are quite “real” in themselves. We could easily take a book to present the reasons for our particular beliefs, examining them in connection with both Eastern and Western religious philosophies. A good general question, we think, and one we’d like to see discussed with our own ideas of the inviolate nature of the individual in mind, has to do with the prevalence of ordinary, daily, conscious-mind thinking and perception throughout much of the world. In historical terms this situation has always existed for the human species; and we think it applies almost equally in Eastern lands, especially among the political leaders and ruling classes within them.

Yet Buddhist belief, for instance, maintains that our perception of the world is not fundamental, but an illusion; our “ignorance” of this basic undifferentiated “suchness” then results in the division of reality into objects and ideas. But why call our generalized awareness an illusion, instead of regarding it as one of the innumerable manifestations that reality takes? No one is free of certain minimum physical needs or of self-oriented thought, I remarked to Jane recently, and each nation strives to expand its technological base no matter what its philosophy may be. Would a widespread use of Eastern religious doctrines be more practical on our earth today, or the kind of self-knowledge Seth advocates? Even given their undeniable accomplishments, why didn’t the Eastern countries create ages ago the immortal societies that could have served as models for those of the West to emulate — cultures and/or nations in which all the mundane human vicissitudes (in those terms) had been long understood and abolished: war, crime, poverty, ignorance, and disease?

(Today we read a long treatise on the “truths” advocated by “holy men” associated with various Eastern religious philosophies — Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and so forth. Jane’s quick and impassioned response through her own writing, as presented below, reflects feelings deeply rooted within her mystical nature, and also illuminates important aspects of the body and direction of the Seth material as a whole. Given those points, she’s bound to have differences of belief with other views of reality.

(Yet I think more is involved than choosing among the belief systems offered by Eastern or Western cultures, for instance — that is, in more basic terms each personality would make that kind of choice before physical birth, with the full understanding of the vast influence such a decision would have upon a life’s work. Obviously, in those terms of linear time, Jane and I each feel that we chose our present environments.

[...] His material was for Jane, and grew out of the paper she wrote this afternoon on Eastern religious thought [see Appendix 15]. [...]