“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now there are books programming out-of-body activity; millions of you are told that when you leave your body you will meet this demon or that demon, or this or that angry god. So, instead, we will form a free city to which those travelers can come, and where those who enter can read books about Buddhism if they prefer, or play at being Catholic. There will also be certain beloved traps set about the city, that will be of an enlightening nature … Now listen: You think there is nothing intrinsically impossible about building a platform in [your] space … I am suggesting, then, a platform in inner reality. It is as valid — far more valid — as an orbiting city in the sky, in physical terms, and it challenges your creative abilities much more. You need a good challenge — it is fun! Not because you should do it, but because you desire it … It is a great creative challenge that you can throw down to yourselves from your future selves.

(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.

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?

(From the 33rd session for March 9, 1964:) I do not bring about the trance state in the manner of which you [Joseph] are speaking. Ruburt switches on another channel, through which my essence can enter more readily. This certainly does involve a looking inward on his part, but it is not self-hypnosis in usual terms — merely a focusing upon an objective inner stimulus … Any such signs (as the powerful, deeper Seth voice) involve camouflage patterns, and do not actually represent direct experience. This is not my voice, for example. It is a representation or approximation of my voice for your edification. Furthermore, in your terms I do not have a voice. But it is a valid representation, and if I say so myself — that’s a pun — the voice is much like the one I would use….

(From the ESP class session for July 16, 1974:) In certain terms, then, you cannot separate yourselves from me [as Ruburt cannot], nor can I separate myself from you. For we are all portions of an event that is taking place within the universe, and the universe is acquainted with all of its parts. When one part of the universe speaks, then all parts speak. When one portion of the universe dies, all portions die — but in your terms, to get into the kind of life you know again, you must exit from space and time so that you can re-enter it.

(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

Her “psychic” accomplishments grew outside the session framework too, of course, as can be seen in much of the appendix material in Volume 1 (to mention those examples only); and so to varying degrees, dissociation, or that strong power of concentration, entered into those activities.