“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(On Monday, November 4, I mailed to Jane’s publisher all of the art due for her Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology: the 16 diagrams I’d just finished, plus two older pieces of work. All are in “line,” or pen-and-ink. I thought it interesting that as I was completing work for Jane’s first book on aspect psychology, she was starting Psychic Politics, the second one in the series. But now I can return to my longer project — the 40 line drawings for Jane’s book of poetry, Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time. Adventures and Dialogues are to be published by Prentice-Hall in the spring and fall, respectively, of 1975. Other references to both books can be found in Note 1 for Session 714.

(It seems that a combination of factors led to those oddly disturbing yet challenging events in the 717th session. One is probably just the state of Jane’s recent exceptional psychic receptivity. Another is my own longtime interest in the American psychologist and philosopher, William James [1842–1910]; he wrote the classic The Varieties of Religious Experience.³ A third is a letter received last week from a Jungian psychologist who had been inspired by Seth’s material on the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist, Carl Jung [1875–1961], in Chapter 13 of Seth Speaks. And a fourth factor would be a most evocative experience Jane had Monday afternoon, in which she found herself experiencing consciousness as an ordinary housefly⁴: From that minute but enthralling viewpoint she knew “herself” crawling up a giant-sized blade of grass. She was exploring the “world view” of a fly. This adventure was certainly a preparation for developments in the 717th session.

(At one of our breaks Jane said that she had picked up the title of the James book from which she’d been “reading”: The Varieties of Religious States — with only States differing from Experience in the name of James’s book in our physical reality. She’d also felt Seth around, like a supervisor, perhaps. She added: “I felt as if the James stuff was coming from a person who was very intent about trying to say something.”

(We both wondered right then if Jane was going off in too many directions at once. She’d always refused to try to “reach the dead” in this way before. Both of us were more than a little troubled — but as usual, we were intrigued even as we questioned our own reactions. We were also quite aware of the humorous aspects of the situation, since Jane does speak for at least one of the “dead”: Seth. And of course, as we sat for tonight’s session we wondered if Seth would discuss what had happened Monday night.

(Pause, one of many.) Each world view exists at its own particular “frequency,” and can only be tuned in to by those who are more or less within the same range. However, the frequencies themselves have to be adjusted properly to be brought into focus, and those adjustments necessitate certain intents and sympathies. It is not possible to move in to such a world view if you are basically at odds with it, for example. You simply will not be able to make the proper adjustments.

Ruburt has been working with alterations of consciousness (for Psychic Politics), and wondering about the basic validity of religion. He has been trying to reconcile intellectual and emotional knowledge. James is far from one of his favorite writers, yet Ruburt’s interests, intent, and desire were close enough so that under certain conditions he could experience the world view held by James. The unknown reality is unknown only because you believe it must be hidden. Once that belief is annihilated, the other quite-as-legitimate views of reality can appear to your consciousness, and worlds just as valid as your own swim into view.

(10:22.) Ruburt picked up on William James’s world view because their interests coincided. A letter from a Jungian psychologist helped serve as a stimulus. The psychologist asked me (deeper and with humor) to comment about Jung. Ruburt felt little correspondence with Jung. In the back of his mind he wondered about James, mainly because he knew that Joseph (Rob) enjoyed one of James’s books.

Ruburt tuned in to that unwritten book. It carried the stamp of James’s own emotional state at that “time,” when he was viewing his earthly experience, in your terms, from the standpoint of one who had died, could look back, and see where he thought his ideas were valid and where they were not. At that point in his existence, there were changes. The plan for the book existed, and still does. In Ruburt’s “present,” he was able to see this world view as expressed within James’s immortal mind.

To do this, Ruburt had to be free enough to accept the view of reality as perceived by someone else. To accomplish this, Ruburt allowed one portion of his consciousness to remain securely anchored in its own reality while letting another portion soak up, so to speak, a reality not its own.

(We also discussed the parallels — and differences — revolving around Jane’s perception of the James book this week and her development eight months ago of the outline and chapter headings for the possible book The Way Toward Health. Two months later, in May, she produced the summary for The Wonderworks, which would be a shorter dissertation on her own dreams, Seth, and the dream-formation of the universe as we know it. [See appendixes 7 and 11 in Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality.] Jane hasn’t taken the time to concentrate upon either of those projects, interesting as they are, although she would if one — or both — of them “caught fire” for her. Neither Jane nor Seth had delivered their respective world-view ideas when she came through with Health and Wonderworks, so another significant aspect of her abilities has since become conscious. Once more questions arise. For instance: Whose world view was Jane tuning in to for the health book? Her own? In turn, of course, all three potential endeavors — Religious States, Health, and Wonderworks — must have origins that are closely related to the source of information behind the “psychic library” Jane tells of visiting in Politics.

These “other,” reinterpreted world views form a matrix from which new creativity emerges. The same thing applies in more mundane endeavors in ordinary life. For example: You may be in a predicament that seems beyond solving. It may be highly individual, since it is yours. It is unique, and has happened in no other way before. No one else has viewed your particular dilemma through your eyes, yet others have been in similar situations, solved the challenges involved, and gone on to greater creativity and fulfillment. If you can momentarily abandon your private world view, that focus from which you experience reality, then you can allow the experience of others who have had similar challenges to color your perception. You can tune in to their solutions and apply them to your particular circumstances. You often do this unconsciously. I do not want you to think, then, that such occurrences work only in esoteric terms.

(We keep our typewritten transcripts of the sessions in a series of three-ring binders. I not only record the current session in the latest one, of course, but have in there a page or two of comments and questions so that from time to time I can ask Seth to clear them up. In closing the notebook tonight, I noticed the query I’d written following the 697th session for May 13, 1974, in Volume 1. In that session Seth told us: “Because you are now a conscious species, in your terms, there are racial idealizations that you can accept or deny.”

(“What,” I wrote at the time, “would a state other than a conscious one be? I have difficulty conceiving of such a situation — which, perhaps, is more revealing of the way I think than of anything else. But how could the species, or its individual members, not be ‘conscious’? Since I think our collective and individual actions are self-consciously designed for survival, in the best meaning of that word, I’m curious to know in what other state these functions could be performed, for existence’s sake…. There are many ramifications here, as I discovered when I started making notes about this concept, so I’m purposely keeping them short.”

(When Jane first read my question after she’d held the 697th session, she told me that she “didn’t get it” — that perhaps I was drawing inferences from Seth’s material that weren’t intended. I tried to explain the point at issue to her on several different occasions, and discovered each time that it was an oddly elusive one to put into words.

There are, in those terms, gradations. When I used the word “conscious” (or “consciousness”), I meant it as I thought you understood it. I thought that you meant: conscious of being conscious, or placing yourself on the one hand outside of a portion of your own consciousness — viewing it (intently) and then saying, “I am conscious of my consciousness.”

When I use the term time-wise, I refer it to the formation of a structure from which one kind of consciousness then views itself, sees itself as unique, and then tries to form other kinds of conscious structures. A fly is conscious of itself, fulfilled within that reality, and feels no need to form an “extension” of that awareness from which to view its own existence.

The fly is intensely conscious, at every moment engrossed in itself and its environment, precisely tuned to elements of which you are “unconscious.” There are simply different kinds of consciousness, and you cannot basically compare one to the other any more than you can compare, say, a toad to a star to an apple to a thought to a woman to a child to a native to a suburbanite to a spider to a cat. They are varieties of consciousness, each focused upon its own view of reality, each containing experience that others exclude.

(In a sense, both world-view books were “born” in the 718th session and the odd previous one that took place under Seth’s auspices. I write this although Jane had no idea of producing such works when those two sessions were held [but see my speculations in Note 6]. Nothing has been forthcoming on any additional material concerning Carl Jung, however — nor has Jane tried for this.

(Oddly enough, the original pages of the James material that Jane saw mentally during the 717th session [and later presented in Chapter 6 of Psychic Politics] never appeared in Afterdeath Journal. There were two different James books in her “library,” Jane said. She transcribed only one of them.)

1. Jane remembered part of one of the two practice elements she’d tuned in to Sunday night; perhaps we’ll get them later. She said that Seth had designed them to follow those he’d given in the 716th session. At the moment, even the fragment she recalled is well worth trying: Seth instructed the reader to immerse himself or herself in an old photograph of a person — and then to look out at our current physical reality through that individual’s eyes. An interesting way to gain a fresh perspective on our present time.

6. Since William James died in 1910, this means that in our terms Jane picked up on his world view as it existed some 54 years after his physical death. We could easily ask Seth a dozen questions about the ideas he’s given in just this one paragraph of material. Very lengthy answers could result, leading to more queries. A book on world views could even develop. But the questions always pile up ahead of us; often they’re never voiced, no matter how interesting they may be. Whether Seth will ever deal with this latest batch, implied as they are, is very problematical.

In Volume I, see Session 680, with notes 1–3. My father, Robert Sr., who died in 1971, was very gifted mechanically. According to Seth, a still-living probable self of Robert Butts, Sr., is “a well-known inventor, who never married but used his mechanically creative abilities to the fullest while avoiding emotional commitment.” Although my father’s “sole intent” was the very challenging one of raising a family in this reality, still he may have often exchanged ideas about automobiles, motorcycles, welding torches, cameras, and so forth, with that other inventor-self.

9. Nine months ago, in February 1974, Seth mentioned the few tentative contacts I’d evidently made with my deceased mother through dreams; see the 683rd session after 11:30, then see my account of one such dream in Note 5 for that session. Two months later, in the 693rd session, Seth described how I reacted (on a cellular, or “unconscious” level) to communications from my mother as Jane and I considered buying a certain house in my childhood neighborhood in Sayre, Pennsylvania. So far, Jane has nothing to report about meetings of any kind with her late mother or father. (All of our parents died between February 1971 and November 1973.)