“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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.

(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.

(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.”

(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.

Quite rightly, he did not interpret the event in conventional terms, and Joseph did not suppose that James himself was communicating in the way usually imagined (but see the opening notes for this session). Joseph did recognize the excellence of the material. James was not aware of the situation. For that matter, James himself is embarked upon other adventures. Ruburt picked up on James’s world view, however, as in your terms at least it “existed” perhaps 10 years ago.⁶ Then, in his mind, James playfully thought of a book that he would write were he “living,” called The Varieties of Religious States — an altered version of a book he wrote in life.

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.

(“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.

Many people working with the Ouija board or automatic writing receive messages that seem, or purport, to come from historic personages. Often, however, the material is vastly inferior to that which could have been produced by the person in question during his or her existence. Any comparison with the material received to the written books or accounts already existing would immediately show glaring discrepancies.

(“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.”

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.