“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(In that class session Seth had much more to say about the dream city. Because of the individual freedom of creation implied in the city’s very existence, and in Jane’s early poem in Note 2, I’ll close this appendix with another of her verses. This one is from an even earlier poem, Lorrylo, written when she was but 15 years old:)

(Seth did give much unexpected material about the brain — and about his own reality, incidentally — but the session turned out to be so long and closely interrelated that I found it very difficult to excerpt; most of the portions I picked out were left hanging, or were too incomplete. Naturally, Seth said what he said from his own viewpoint. I ended up choosing the few quotations gathered together here just to indicate the direction of the information, while hoping that the entire session, with others promised on the subject by Seth, will be published some day.

In these sessions the full range of brain waves is utilized as you understand them. Here, in a highly creative, disciplined, and yet spontaneous performance, a situation is set up in which knowledge is obtained from the known frequencies, combined so that consciousness can use itself more fully, reaching into many areas closed to one range of consciousness alone. The various diverse, unique characteristics of each level of awareness are given play. In a way this is like an accelerated, chosen, well-organized “conscious” dream venture, in which Ruburt travels through mediums of consciousness until finally he, still being himself, is nevertheless no longer himself (humorously), but me.

(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.

(Sessions 12 through 15 are briefly quoted in Note 4 for the 680th session, in Volume 1; Seth remarked upon the impossibility of closed systems, his own senses [including something of their limits], his ability to visit other “planes” of reality, and his “incipient” man’s form.

(Seth came through with this material, including his jocular closing remarks, because a good friend of ours had asked many questions as he witnessed the session — one of them being why the right-handed Jane gestured mainly with her left hand while speaking in trance. I hadn’t noticed this mannerism.

When psychic gestalts are formed they are not static. They make different alliances until they find their place in a whole identity that serves their purposes, or are strong enough to become indestructible. They are always becoming. They are not closed units.

Even on such occasions, however, I look in on you closely … to see whether or not my message is coming across clearly, and I also learn.

Now my relationship with you [and Ruburt] is indeed a strange one, since you do not relate to me as you do to each other. The — I hope — delightfully human egotistical characteristics that I show help calm your fears and show you that the self as you think of it continues to exist [after physical death]. I have a reservoir of personality banks upon which I can draw, and as a teacher I use the one that is most effective in any given system of reality; this is the one I use here. It is a portion of myself that is the most closely connected with earthly existence, and it is a self that I liked very well, indeed.

(From my notes at the close of the 700th session for May 29, 1974, in Volume 1: “In our case,” Seth said a bit later, “Ruburt almost ‘becomes’ the material he receives from me. If certain other beneficial alterations occur, and further understanding on Ruburt’s part, we may be able to meet at other levels of consciousness — in the dream state, when he is not cooperating in the production of our book material.” For Jane has never met Seth, face to face, you might say, in a dream. The closest she’s come to this situation is in giving a session for him in the dream state, as she does in waking life.

(Finally, I’ll close this appendix with a couple of quotations from Seth that I return to again and again. [These in turn lead to a last note.] In Chapter 3 of Seth Speaks, see the 519th session for March 23, 1970:) When I enter your system, I move through a series of mental and psychic events. You would interpret these events as space and time, and so often I must use the terms, for I must use your language rather than my own … In one way, I translate what I am into an event that you can understand to some extent.³⁸

(I should note that Jane’s own use of that first inner sense, demonstrated in the example she gives in Chapter 19, reflects a very strong facet of her psychic ability that she seldom indulges. Her reluctance here is closely connected to her deep feelings about personal privacy.)