“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

1. “You can colonize an entire inner level of reality,” Seth told that October 1st class. “To do so, you must give your best with dedication and joyful creativity. This will not be an imaginary city. It will have a greater reality than any physical city that you know, and it can, in its own way, shine with brighter lights in inner reality than any nighttime city displays. There, I hope, you will work at developing skills, in terms of the dream-art scientist (for instance; see Session 700 in Volume 1 of ‘Unknown’ Reality), and learn other professions than the ones you now know.”

(We read that in ordinary terms highly creative people [like Jane] usually generate large amounts of theta and low-alpha waves pretty constantly while doing their thing. Measuring and recording brain waves is a complicated task, however; not only is it important which areas or lobes of the brain are monitored — if not all of them — but because of the mechanical limitations of the EEG itself much that goes on in the brain is necessarily missed. In addition, the two hemispheres of the individual brain often show variations in electrical energy states. But most importantly, we think, while the EEG can indicate broad categories of brain activity, it can hardly probe the participant’s very individual and subjective content of mind within this camouflage [physical] reality. Nor at this time, given the minimum premise that Jane’s speaking for Seth constitutes any indication of “paranormal” activity, do we think that her performance could be identified as such per se on the graphs of her brain waves. The state of “EEG art” isn’t that advanced yet [if it ever will be]. Presumably, however, when speaking for Seth, Jane would show definite changes in all frequency areas in both hemispheres, with the theta and delta ranges altered the most. We also think that her EEG readings would vary once again when she spoke or sang in Sumari, her trance “language.”

(From the 22nd session for February 4, 1964:) I have never trusted the written word half as much as I trust the spoken word, and on your plane it is difficult to trust either. But I do not feel that I could be myself as easily by means of automatic writing, for example. I do not mind speaking through Ruburt’s mouth — somehow the sound of the words is rather pleasant. But seeing myself transformed more or less into plain black and white words on a sheet of paper seems dull and uninteresting. And I have always enjoyed conversation, which is the liveliest of all arts….

In the terms of my book (“Unknown” Reality), I was a dream-art scientist,³⁷ but I was very dogmatic, and I demanded that others follow my symbols and not their own. And that is why I now so carefully tell you to follow your own ways.

By then I’d lost many months from my job as a commercial artist, which was work I’d returned to several years earlier to help ease our financial pressures. I was 44 years old — and, as I recognized after the sessions began, at a point in life where I greatly needed more penetrating insights into the meaning of existence. So did Jane, even though she was almost 10 years younger. As the sessions became part of our joint reality, we gradually came to understand that the illness I struggled with was a disguised expression of rebellion for both of us. We were very dissatisfied with our status quo: After years of work, Jane had managed to publish but a few poems and a few pieces of science fantasy (several short stories and two brief novels), and in my own view I wasn’t making it as the kind of artist I wanted to be. We were driven to know more — about art, about writing, about the human condition, about everything. My own need, as well as Jane’s, struck deep responses within her psyche.

37. In Volume 1, see Session 700. Seth at 9:53: “The true art of dreaming is a science long forgotten by your world. Such an art, pursued, trains the mind in a new kind of consciousness — one that is equally at home in either [exterior or interior] existence, well grounded and secure in each.”

And from Session 704: “The dream-art scientist, the true mental physicist, the complete physician — such designations represent the kinds of training that could allow you to understand the unknown, and therefore the known reality, and so become aware of the blueprints that exist beyond the physical universe.”