“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane’s “adventure in consciousness” was so rich,⁵ even from my observer’s viewpoint, that my attempts to describe it seem terribly inadequate by comparison. In this session Seth discusses to some extent the whole subject of her psychic growth.)

(“Good evening, Seth.”)

(Seth discussed another matter involving Jane; after delivering about a page of material he ended the session at 11:19 P.M.)

1. Yesterday afternoon, Sunday, I lay down for a nap. Just before I drifted into the sleep state I had three little experiences involving internal vision. My eyes were closed. In the episode of interest here, I saw myself back in the first century A.D.: I was an officer of rather high rank in a Roman legion, and I was aboard a small galley in the Mediterranean Sea. I knew that I was on official military business for a land-based armed force, even though I was on ship. I didn’t much like the blunt, unfeeling “I” that I saw. Briefly through those eyes I looked out upon twin rows of galley slaves … I described the scene and my feelings about it to Jane, and made small, full-face and profile pen-and-ink drawings of myself as the officer. I had no name for that other self. Given Seth’s concept of simultaneous time, I thought I might have glimpsed another existence — whether a reincarnational one or a probable one — that I was living now.

After my first Roman, I speculated about whether I might have touched upon a reincarnational self or a probable one. See, therefore, Seth’s material on reincarnation in Chapter 4 (among others) of Seth Speaks; then see his material on probable selves in Chapter 16 of that book, and in Session 680 for Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality.

For myself, I think of reincarnational selves as having their roots in the physical reality we know (whether in simultaneous or linear terms of time), but of probable selves as having much wider and more complicated ranges of existence: I believe that even though we create them on an individual basis, our probable selves can reach into a multitude of other realities, both physical and nonphysical. I don’t remember Seth discussing such “probable” possibilities in just that way, especially, and they would be much too involved to go into here, but I’ve often felt that some of our probable selves move into realms of being that are literally incomprehensible to us, so different — alien — are they and their environments from our usual conceptions of “solid” physical existence.

3. In Dialogues, her book of poetry, Jane explored several other “key” episodes in her psychic development; see her Preface, then these selections in Part Two: “The Paper and Trips Through an Inner Garden,” and “Single-Double Worlds, the Rain Creature, and the Light.” She also wrote about those transcendent experiences in Adventures; see Chapter 9 for her “paper” perceptions (in March 1972), and Chapter 15 for her encounters with the rain creature and the light (in February 1973). Both Jane and Seth had things to say about the rain creature and the light in Personal Reality; see the 639th session for Chapter 10.

4. Jane’s declaration of the “super-real” aspects of her ecstatic state, that “The world is so much more solid right now,” soon had me hunting for relevant material I remembered Seth giving, but couldn’t place. I found two sources in Seth Speaks. In Chapter 7, see the 530th session for May 20, 1970, at 10:02: “There are realities that are ‘relatively more valid’ than your own … your physical table [for example] would appear as shadowy in contrast … You would have a sort of “supertable” in those terms. Yours is not a system of reality formed by the most intense concentration of energy … Other portions of yourself, therefore, of which you are not consciously aware, do inhabit what you could call a super-system of reality in which consciousness learns to handle and perceive much stronger concentrations of energy….”

5. So far in Volume 2, I’ve mentioned the inner senses (as described by Seth) in Note 5 for Session 709, and Note 6 for Appendix 18. Seth came through with No. 6, Innate Knowledge of Basic Reality, in the 40th session for April 1, 1964: “This is an extremely rudimentary sense. It is concerned with the entity’s working knowledge of the basic vitality of the universe … Without this sixth sense and its constant use by the inner self, you could not construct the physical camouflage universe. You can compare this sense with instinct, although it is concerned with the innate knowledge of the entire universe.”

At least to some degree, Jane’s exploration last Friday afternoon of those super-real models for our world represented her use of the sixth inner sense — the same one, she wrote in Chapter 19 of The Seth Material, that “… also shows itself in inspirations, and episodes of spontaneous ‘knowing.’ Surely this sense was partially responsible for my Idea Construction manuscript.” In Volume 1, see Note 7 for Session 679.

6. A note added six months later: When Seth referred to “this book” in the 715th session, he meant a one-volume edition of “Unknown” Reality, of course. Jane and I didn’t decide to publish the work in two volumes until just before the 741st session (for Section 6) was held, in April 1975. See the early Introductory Notes for Volume 2.

8. See the 686th session in Volume 1; then see Jane’s material on other- than-usual neurological messages and speeds in appendixes 4 and 5. And (later) I add here a paragraph from the private session Seth held for us on May 1, 1974 — 10 days after he’d finished his work on “Unknown” Reality:

In the 4th session, for December 8, 1963, Seth announced his presence to Jane and me through the Ouija board. In the 6th session he told Jane, in connection with our questions: “Begin training.” In the 12th session, for January 2, 1964, he informed us that we were his “first lesson class,” then added: “At one time or another all of us on my plane give such lessons, but psychic bonds between teacher and pupils are necessary. This means that we must wait until personalities in your reality have progressed sufficiently for lessons to begin … although reason is extremely important, and I do not mean to minimize its value, nevertheless what you call emotion or feeling is the connective between us, and it is the connective that most clearly represents the life force on any plane and under any circumstances.”

Later, we were to learn about the distortions that could happen as Jane relayed some of Seth’s material; given the open-ended nature of time, and considering the idea of probable realities, we came to realize that simultaneously we could and could not be Seth’s “first lesson class.” But in those early sessions we had no background knowledge out of which to ask meaningful questions. In the 15th session Seth told Jane and me: “I am giving you what may be considered a broad outline to be filled in.”

11. In Note 5 for Session 692, in Volume 1, I refer to Seth’s term, “species of consciousness,” and the links between his material in that session and this one.

12. Note 25 for Appendix 18 contains information on The Coming of Seth, in which Jane described her burgeoning psychic abilities.