“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The unknown reality and the psyche’s greater existence cannot be separated from the intimate knowledge of the flesh, however, for the life of the flesh takes place within that framework. As earlier mentioned,⁴ the conscious self generally focuses in but one small dimension. Period. That dimension is experienced as fully as possible, its clear brilliance and exquisite focus possible only because you tune in to it and bring it to the forefront of your attention. In your terms, when you understand how to do this, then you can begin to tune in to other “stations” as well.

Throughout the ages people have taken such journeys. The snapshots⁵ are developed in the “darkroom” that exists between your world and those visited. The people who have journeyed into the unknown reality have always been adventurous. Yet many had already seen the snapshots sent to your world by others, and so they began to clothe their own original visions of their journeys in the guise of those other pictures. A group of handy ideas, concepts, and images then formed. The clear vision of such explorers became lost. Those travelers no longer tried to make their own original snapshots of the strange environments and realities through which they passed. It was easier to interpret their experiences through the psychic penny postcards.

So you take a psychic guided tour into other realities; the unknown seems known, so that you are not an explorer after all, but a tourist, taking with you the paraphernalia of your own civilization, and beliefs that are quite conventional.

Ruburt has thus far insisted upon his private vision and his unique expression of the unknown reality as he experiences it, and so he brings back bulletins that do not agree with the conventional psychic line.

If there were discrepancies among the snapshots, however, people worried. While you expect pictures of your own reality to be diverse, those who journeyed into the unknown reality became concerned if their snapshots did not agree, so they tried desperately to make all of the pictures look alike. They touched them up, in other words.

First of all, in your own world those travelers into unknown realms were considered outcasts, so to speak, as if they were picking up television programs that no one else saw.⁸ If their stories of their experiences did not jibe, who would believe them? They felt threatened. They felt that they had to tell the same story or they would be considered insane, so they made a tacit agreement, interpreting their experiences in the terms used by those who had gone “before.”

You make your own reality. So, programmed ahead of time, they perceived [data] according to the psychic conventions that had been established. There are tigers in Asia, but you can travel through Asia and if you do not want to you’ll never see a tiger. It’s according to where you go. In the unknown reality your thoughts are instantly made apparent and real, materialized according to your beliefs. There, if you believe in demons, you will see them — without ever realizing that they are part of the environment of your psyche, formed by your beliefs, and thrown out as mirages over a very real environment that you do not perceive. You will believe the psychic tour books and go hunting for demons instead of tigers.

The same applies to other realities. You know there is a difference between, say, the picture before your eyes and a postcard, “artificial,” rendition of it. So there is a difference between the unknown reality and the postcards that have been given to you to depict it.

In your terms, Ruburt has been out for the real thing — to experience the unknown reality directly through his own perceptions, as divorced from the scenes given him by the postcards. Period.

3. A note added later: Jane used certain portions of the 714th session in Chapter 1 of Politics, while making her own points there. Since it’s obviously part of “Unknown” Reality too, however, the entire session is presented in place in Volume 2. The same reasoning applies to the material each of us contributed at session’s end.

7. Just as legend has it that the continent of Atlantis lay in the Atlantic Ocean between Europe/Africa and the Americas, so the great land of Mu (the Motherland) is said to have existed in the vast Pacific Ocean between the Americas and Asia. Each of those mythical domains eventually sank beneath the waters in a great cataclysm; each perished more than 10,000 years ago. For some Atlantis material and references in Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality, see Appendix 14.

8. And “those travelers into unknown worlds” can still be called outcasts, strange, weird — or worse. Jane has had her share of such reactions from others (as have I). When combined with her own natural-enough questions about her psychic abilities, as sometimes happens, such episodes aren’t any fun. In accidental ways that would be quite humorous if they weren’t so personal, we’ve also learned what negative ideas others can have about us: A person will inadvertently reveal to us, during a conversation, or in a letter or over the telephone, the unflattering opinions his or her mate, or parents, or friends, really have of Jane and me and the work we’re engaged in with the Seth material.

11. Of interest here are a few excerpts from a personal session held just a year later, in October 1975. During the session Seth discussed inner sound in connection with Jane’s own physical symptoms. (In Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality, see the 679th session before 10:31, and Note 8. The quotations below are also related to the material on inner sound, light, and electromagnetic values in Chapter 5 of Personal Reality.) Seth, at 11:07 P.M.: