“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Sometimes, though, I find it quite a challenge to excerpt a number of sessions to illuminate a particular one. I want the passages chosen to make sense on their own, out of context, and to focus clearly on the subject; at the same time, I don’t want to include too many or too few of my own notes. But in this appendix, at least, I discovered that it wasn’t always possible to achieve both of those goals just as I wanted to — not in connection with each point mentioned. It also became inevitable that at least some elements of Seth’s own “separate-but-connected” reality would have to be considered. In addition to those concerns, on occasion I found myself rearranging the quoted discussions a bit — although really to a minor degree — for even greater brevity and clarity. So here’s how it all worked out:

(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.

(Speaking of names, this is the time to remind all that Seth calls both Jane and me by male names: Ruburt and Joseph. Why does he speak of Jane as a male — and so as “he” and “him?” In Note 6 for Session 679, in Volume 1, I quoted Seth from the 12th session for January 2, 1964:) Sex, regardless of all your fleshy tales, is a psychic phenomenon, merely certain qualities which you call male and female. The qualities are real, however, and permeate other planes as well as your own. They are opposites which are nevertheless complementary, and which merge into one. When I say as I have that the overall entity [or whole self] is neither male nor female, and yet refer to [some] entities by definite male names such as “Ruburt” and “Joseph,” I merely mean that in the overall essence, the [given] entity identifies itself more with the so-called male characteristics than with the female.

(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.

2. Seth didn’t quote Jane’s little poem exactly from 26 years ago, but paraphrased it. [...]

(Even if beta waves, then, seem to be the “official pulses” of our civilization [to use Seth’s phrase from a session that will be quoted in part below], still Jane and I wonder: When aren’t we actually in a state of altered consciousness? [...]

[...] In Chapter 1 of The Seth Material, Jane quoted Seth-to-be from the 4th session for December 8, 1963, as that personality came through on the Ouija board (which we’d used to initiate these sessions): “You may call me whatever you choose. [...]