“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I finally decided that the best way to present the variety of material desired, whether from Seth, Jane, or myself, was in chronological order, letting a composite picture emerge as the work progresses. This system automatically makes room for any references in Volume 1. In actuality the chronology begins long before “Unknown” Reality was started, and continues well beyond the date of its ending, in April 1975. Since the excerpts are still more representative than complete, however, due to the accumulated mass of information available, my own choices enter in: ESP class data are quoted a number of times; included is material summarizing Jane’s own theories about the Seth phenomena, as she worked them out in her recently completed Adventures in Consciousness; but reincarnation, while mentioned often, isn’t stressed in terms of particulars — that is, I refer to Seth’s statements that he, Jane and I led closely involved lives in Denmark in the 1600’s, but those lives aren’t studied per se. Within our ordinary context of linear time I think of reincarnation, even though in Seth’s terms it’s really a simultaneous phenomenon, as being further away, or more removed, from us physical creatures than the more “immediate” psychic connections and mechanics I want to show as linking Seth, Jane, and myself. And also because of that sense of removal, Seth Two¹ is hardly mentioned at all.

Also, Ruburt has experienced and used dissociation, though to a lesser degree, before our communications — that is, in his work — and knows how to handle it.

We have gone into this before, and I have no doubt that we will on endless occasions. And if I succeed in convincing you of my reality as a personality, I will have done extremely well … Ruburt’s subconscious has enough camouflage pattern to enable me to make contact, but not so much as to distort me out of all recognition. I am not his subconscious, though I speak through it. It is the atmosphere through which I can come to you, as the air is the atmosphere through which the bird flies. A certain reassembly of myself is necessary when I enter your plane, and this is done partially by myself, and by the combined subconscious efforts of you, Joseph, and Ruburt. Will this satisfy you for now?

… and Ruburt did get a rather embarrassing flash from me before the session. I blush to admit the fact, but at one time I did call you Yo-Yo (see the excerpts for the 27th session).

(From the 211th session for November 24, 1965:) First of all, as far as the hands are concerned, to be left- or right-handed has to do with inner mechanisms and brain patterns that come first, before the motions of the hands. Characteristically I operated in certain manners that resulted in the primary use of my left hand, when I was focused within physical matter.

The voice mechanism, unfortunately, is something that we must work with, and to get my own personality across through the female image and vocal chords, certain adjustments must be made. Beyond this, however, as I have mentioned before in class, it is not out of the inner sense of my invisible heart, but out of the depths of your own psychologies that you make me into a wise old man, and project upon me the authority images that lurk in your own minds. I have always tried to keep you from making this error, and sought to release from within yourselves your own abilities.

(The following excerpt is from an ESP class session that Seth delivered three months after the 711th session [which inspired this appendix] was held on October 9, 1974. As noted much earlier, the chronology for our study of the Jane-Ruburt-Seth relationship “begins long before ‘Unknown’ Reality was started, and continues well beyond the date of its ending in April 1975.” Very soon, then, the quotations to come reach beyond that date: They’re usually short, and are from a mixture of class, regular, and private [or “deleted”] sessions. With an exception or two they contain material that ordinarily might not have been published for several years — if ever. But all of them contribute insights into the subject under consideration.

(The 768th session was held on March 22, 1976, 11 months after Seth had finished dictating “Unknown” Reality. Originally Jane and I deleted the following rather personal material from the session — yet we present it here because in it Seth explores further the connections involving the three of us. My notes at the time show that I was also distinctly surprised by Seth’s comments on his emotional behavior at his own “level of activity,” but I soon understood my reaction as a sign that we still had things to learn about him, as well as ourselves. In one passage Seth referred to some health difficulties, now resolved, that had bothered me just before our sessions with him began.

Ruburt provided himself with a background in which a parent (Jane’s mother) was steadily, chronically ill,³² and in which the medical profession with its beliefs was in constant sight. His mother was not medically neglected. His background included far more than sickness and the medical profession, however, but Ruburt knew that the conventional medical framework was not the answer to human ills. As you became more and more incapacitated, the trigger was set to find another solution. Psychic structures interweave, and realities do, one through the other (as Jane had written a few hours before the session).

9. Jane produced her manuscript, The Physical Universe as Idea Construction, three months before the sessions began. That key event is briefly described in Volume 1. See Note 7 for Session 679.

“The entity itself does not have to keep constant check on its personalities, because in each one there is an inner self-conscious part that knows its origin. I have mentioned before that some part of you knows exactly how much oxygen the lungs breathe, and how much energy it takes to pace a floor, and this is the part of you of which I spoke. It is the self-conscious part that receives all inner data.

24. In the 464th session I made sure that I asked Seth to elaborate upon his statement in the last session: “The slightest perception alters every atom within your body.” He came through with his answer just before first break:

(A note added later: That January 1975 class session is an excellent one in many respects, and Jane presented much of it in Chapter 15 of her Psychic Politics. Although Seth finished his work on both volumes of “Unknown” Reality well before Jane was through with Politics, the latter was published first — and that chronology is treated in my Introductory Notes for Volume 1.

31. “In late 1963,” Jane wrote in Chapter 2 of The Seth Material, “some months before our sessions began, we’d taken a vacation in York Beach, Maine, hoping that a change of environment would improve Rob’s health. The doctor didn’t know what was wrong with his back and suggested that he spend some time under traction in the hospital. Instead we decided that his reaction to stress was at least partially responsible, hence this trip.”

Yet, we fully agree with Seth — that like any other personality Jane chose her physical environment before birth, planning to meet certain challenges within that setting.

38. Apropos of his quotations from Seth Speaks, here’s what Seth had to say in a later personal session: “There are rhythms that exist over a period of time, as I have mentioned before, and had you the leisure to check your records you would see that overall we have about the same number of sessions each year. There are many cycles involved — some connected with the two of you, with myself, or with other conditions quite apart.