“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Our last session, the 717th, is deleted from “Unknown” Reality. For it was and wasn’t a Seth session, and it was and wasn’t book dictation, as the following notes will show.

(Before what we expected to be our regular session for Monday evening, Jane told me that she’d awakened in the middle of the previous night with insights about two practice elements¹ Seth would discuss — but we didn’t hear from Seth even though she felt him “around” as we prepared for the session.

(What had happened to Seth? That individual would have to wait. “I was getting just now,” Jane said at 8:58, “that James called his melancholy ‘a cast of soul.’” Her eyes were closed. “Now I’m getting a book. Why, it’s a paperback. I see this printed material, only it’s very small, almost microscopic, and oddly enough the whole thing is printed on grayish-type paper. I see it really small, in my mind.”

(And with that, in an altered state of consciousness, Jane began delivering last Monday evening the material from the book she mentally saw. Before I fully realized what was happening, I was taking her words down verbatim.

(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.”

(“Numbers have an emotional equivalent, in that their symbols originally arose from the libido that always identifies itself with the number 1, and feels all other numbers originating out of itself. The libido knows itself as God, and therefore all fractions fly out of the self-structure of its own reality.”

(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.

(I’d just begun typing the “James and Jung” material, so from my original notes I read the rest of it to Jane as we waited for Seth to come through. I also thought she discussed an excellent idea of her own, saying that she believed the James-Jung episode itself was an exercise in making the unknown reality known. She’d already done some writing yesterday, for Psychic Politics, leading toward this view⁵; so whatever we learned through Seth this evening, we already felt reasonably sure that in usual trite terms Jane hadn’t been communicating directly with two such famous personalities. Instead, she was involved in something quite a bit different — and much more believable.)

Now. This section [of “Unknown” Reality] deals with the various exercises that will, I hope, provide you with your own intimate glimpses into previously unknown realities.

I said (in sessions 711 and 716, for instance) that your normal focus of consciousness can be compared to your home station. So far, exercises have been described that will gently lead you away from concentration upon this home base, even while its structure is strengthened at the same time. You can also call this home station or local program your world view, since from it you perceive your reality. To some extent it represents your personal focus, through which you interpret most of your experience. As I mentioned (in Session 715, for instance), when you begin to move away from that particular organization, strange things may start to happen. You may be filled with wonder, excitement, or perplexity. You may be delighted or appalled, according to whether or not your new perceptions agree or disagree with your established world view.

Instead of a regular session (last Monday night), the framework of the session was used in a new kind of exercise. It was meant as an example of what can happen under the best of circumstances, when someone leaves a native world view and tunes in to another, quite different from the original.

(Slowly:) He was aware, however, of the universe through William James’s world view. Period. As you might dial a program on a television set, Ruburt tuned in to the view of reality now held in the mind of William James. Because that view necessarily involved emotions, Ruburt felt some sense of emotional contact — but only with the validity of the emotions. Each person has such a world view, whether living or dead in your terms, and that “living picture” exists despite time or space. It can be perceived by others.

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.

To do this, you must have faith in yourself, and in the framework of your known reality. Otherwise you will be too afraid to abandon even briefly the habitual, organized view of the world that is your own.

In the same way, if you are overly concerned about the nature of your own reality, and if you are looking to others to justify your existence, you will not be able to abandon your own world view successfully, for you will feel too threatened. Or, traveling in psychic exercises even slightly away from your own home station, you will still try to take your familiar paraphernalia with you, and interpret even entirely new situations of consciousness in the light of your own world view. You will transpose your own set of assumptions, then, into conditions in which they may not really fit at all.

It is quite possible to tune in to the world view of any person, living or dead in your terms. The world view of any individual, even not yet born from your standpoint, exists nevertheless. Ruburt’s experience simply serves as an example of what is possible.

He felt that the soul chooses states of emotion as you would choose, say, a state to live in. He felt that the chosen emotional state was then used as a framework through which to view experience. He began to see a conglomeration of what he loosely called religious states, each different and yet each serving to unify experience in the light of its particular “natural features.” These natural features would appear as the ordinary temperaments and inclinations of the soul.

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.

(Pause.) The unknown reality, colon: Again, because of your precise orientation you are often theoretically intrigued by the contemplation of worlds not your own. And while you may often yearn for some evidence of those other realities, you are just as apt to become scandalized⁷ by the very evidence that you have so earnestly requested.

Ruburt has embarked upon his own journeys into the unknown reality. I cannot do that for him. I can only point out the way, as I do for each reader. In his own new book (Politics) Ruburt has his personal way of explaining what he is experiencing, and since he shares the same reality with you, then you will be able to relate — perhaps better, even — to his explanations than to mine.

However, it is quite possible for him to tune in to James’s complete book if he desires to, for that work is indeed a psychic reality, a plan or a model existing in the inward order of activity (as Jane had explained to me in similar terms this afternoon).

Such creative “architect’s plans” are often unknowingly picked up by others, altered or changed, ending up as entirely new productions. Most writers do not examine their sources that closely. The same applies, of course, to any field of endeavor. Many quite modern and sophisticated developments have existed in what you think of now as past civilizations. The plans, as models, were picked up by inventors, scientists, and the like, and altered to their own specific directions, so that they emerged in your world not as copies but as something new. Many so-called archaeological discoveries were made when individuals suddenly tuned in to a world view of another person not of your space or time. Before you have the confidence to leave your own particular home station, however, you must be secure within it. You must know it will “be there” when you get back.

(“I felt out of the James thing until you read it to me before the session,” she said, “then a lot of aspects about it came back. We won’t bother doing that book of his, I know, but I could get it — the whole thing. It’s right there in the library….” We talked about what an interesting product The Varieties of Religious States would be, and the many implications involved, without intending to do anything more about such a work.

(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.

Yet in many such instances, the Ouija board operator or the automatic writer is to some extent or another tuning in to a world view, struggling to open roads of perception free enough to perceive an altered version of reality, but not equipped enough through training and temperament, perhaps, to express it.

(Long pause at 11:30.) The most legitimate instances of communication between the living and the dead occur in an intimate personal framework, in which a dead parent makes contact with its offspring⁹: or a husband or wife freshly out of physical reality appears to his or her mate. But very seldom do historic personages make contact, except with their own intimate circles.

Give us a moment … You are so used to your own private interpretation of reality that when you allow yourselves to stray from it, you immediately want to interpret your new experience in terms that make sense to your familiar orientation. You are also highly involved with symbols. In ordinary life you often hamper your own creativity. When you use the Ouija board or trance procedures, you frequently free philosophical areas of your mind that have been frozen. The resulting information then definitely seems to come from outside of yourself, and because you are literal-minded you try to interpret such experiences in a literal way. The material must come from a philosopher, therefore (amused), and since it certainly seems profound to your usual mundane organization, then it appears that such information must originate with a profound mind certainly not your own.

You may signify this to yourself symbolically, so that the board or the automatic writing designates its origin as being Socrates¹⁰ or Plato. If you are spiritualistically oriented, the information may come from a famous psychic recently dead. Instead, you yourself have momentarily escaped from your accustomed world view, or home program; you are reaching out into other levels of reality, but still interpreting your experience in old terms. Therefore much of its creativity escapes you.

You are each as valid as Socrates or Plato. Your influences reach through the entire framework of actuality in ways that you do not understand. Socrates and Plato — and William James (note that I smiled) — specialized in certain fashions. You know these individuals as names of people that existed — but in your terms, and in your terms only, those existences represented the flowering aspects of their personalities. (Louder.) They often dwelled nameless upon the face of the earth, as many of you do, in your terms only, now, before reaching what you think of as those summits.

(“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 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.

(A note added in December 1977: The 718th session on world views proved to be a cornerstone in Jane’s own development, and in Seth’s thematic structure as well. Jane’s The World View of Paul Cézanne: A Psychic Interpretation, was published earlier this year, and as I type this final manuscript for Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality I can add that she’s also completed The Afterdeath Journal of an American Philosopher: The World View of William James. It came out in 1978.

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.

2. A note added several months later: I see now that I should enlarge upon Note 2 for the 715th session, in which I wrote that Jane “would initiate the transposition of material from Volume 2 of ‘Unknown’ Reality into Politics, since she was so intimately and enthusiastically involved in producing both books at the same time.” For her to work this way is entirely in keeping with her spontaneous nature; she intuitively seeks to use whatever sources of information — including Seth himself — she has at hand for whatever project she may be engaged in. In the early chapters of Politics especially, then, she both quotes and paraphrases material from Volume 2, beginning with the 714th session, which contains her account of her original inspiration for that work.

However, Jane’s use of material in this manner is quite natural in another way also: for Politics represents her personal exploration of the unknown reality that Seth has been so graphically describing in his own work.

I always indicate in Volume 2 when such a movement of material into Politics has taken place. Yet Jane did no blind copying, and almost always she quoted an excerpt rather than a complete passage from a session, for instance. Jane and Seth each say what they want to say from their unique, respective viewpoints — and it becomes obvious that her book should be read as an adjunct to Seth’s.

In my own notes, of course, I described those events dealt with by Jane and Seth from my own perspective, as I watched them happen. “In ‘Unknown’ Reality the reader should focus upon the material from Seth’s viewpoint,” Jane said. “Yet it might be fun now and then to look at the daily events in our lives first, as recorded in Rob’s notes — and see the dictation in the sessions as emerging from those humble sources. What I’ve said in Psychic Politics should certainly add a lot of insight there.”

4. The contents of this note flow out of what I wrote in Note 2: Seth mentions Jane’s fly experience in this (718th) session, and Jane discussed it in more detail in Chapter 5 of Politics. Then in Chapter 6 of her book she presented long excerpts from the James-Jung material as it developed in the 717th session.

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.