“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(“Good evening, Seth.”)

New paragraph (as Seth often declares). When you identify with only one particular level of your thought processes, however, the others — when you sense them — appear alien. You begin to feel threatened, determined to uphold your old ideas of selfhood. Plants grow many leaves. One leaf does not threaten the existence of others, and the plant is not jealous of its own foliage. So there is no need to protect your own individuality because it may send out other shoots into probable realities. This is simply the self growing in different directions, spreading its seeds.

(10:11. “I’ve been doing this book for so long by now,” Jane commented, “that I don’t know if it’s a great big sprawling thing without any order, or what. I’ve lost all track of whatever sense of continuity it’s got,” she amended. “When I come out of trance I don’t know what the thing’s all about….” Out of habit, Jane — and consequently Seth — still talked about “Unknown” Reality as being one entity, even though just five days ago we’d learned from her editor that it would be published in two volumes.

(The tenor of Seth’s material tonight led me to think that he was close to finishing “Unknown” Reality, but since Jane evidently didn’t feel that way I said nothing about it. Resume at 10:29.)

(“Thank you, Seth —”

(I read to Jane the few paragraphs of material Seth had given on Atlantis. Both of us thought it quite sensible, although it brought up questions I’ll get to shortly. I’ll have to admit that we cringe a bit when Seth talks about cultish concepts like Atlantis. We always think that such beliefs, while serving a variety of quite legitimate creative and psychic purposes, are very likely to be more mythic than physically factual. The word “physically” is important here. From these remarks it’s easy to see that we feel much more comfortable with the ideas about Atlantis that Seth advanced in this session. “He’s got more on it, too,” Jane said now, but she didn’t go back into trance.

(The questions I referred to concern the fact that once in The Seth Material and nine times in Seth Speaks, by my count, Seth spoke of Atlantis as being in our historical past. He did so this evening also, of course, when he remarked at 10:59 that our “ideas of Atlantis are partially composed of future memories” — thus leaving room for past manifestations. Seth’s theory of simultaneous time, which can encompass the notion of future probabilities projected backward into an apparent past, for instance, leaves great leeway for the interpretation of events or questions, however, and makes the idea of contradiction posed by an Atlantis in the past and one in the future too simple as an explanation. At any given “time,” depending on whatever information he’s given previously, Jane could just as easily quote Seth as placing Atlantis in our historic past, or in a probable past, present, or future — or all four “places” at once, for that matter. Any or all of these views would simply be repatterning other dimensions of time from our “present point of power.”

(Questions of reincarnation enter in also. Seth has connected himself with Atlantis only once, but he did so very definitely; from the 588th session for Chapter 22 of Seth Speaks: “I was … born in Atlantis.” Jane and I felt those same uneasy twinges then, too, but chose not to explore them at that time.

(After this evening’s session, however, we decided we’d like to know why in Seth’s view Atlantis had moved from its long, if uneasy residence in our “historical past” forward into a future probable reality. We resolved to ask him to explain — but strangely enough, I note later, a month passed before we got around to a session on the subject. By then, Seth had been through with “Unknown” Reality for three weeks. Now I refer the reader to Note 11 for quotations from the session, the 747th, in question.)

1. This is a good place to insert these excerpts from the session Seth gave for ESP class on February 16, 1971, three years before starting “Unknown” Reality. While it leads to a number of questions, his material still sums up certain important meanings that lie behind or within the overall concept of probable realities.

Much in these passages fits in with material I’ve presented in Appendix 12, on the reasons behind the pain and suffering in the world. Early in that appendix, then, see the quotations from the 580th session for Chapter 20 of Seth Speaks, and from the 634th session for Chapter 8 of Personal Reality.

2. Our “new” hill house is really 21 years old. It seems new to Jane and me, though — and to Seth too, we notice. Calling it new is a pretty convenient way for us to distinguish it from the much older apartment house we vacated last month. Actually, however, we’re using the word “new” to indicate our present physical and psychological states. In that sense, if the house we’ve just moved into was physically older than the one we left behind, I suppose we’d still call it new.

5. I borrowed liberally from these very perceptive lines of Seth’s in order to conclude the Epilogue for Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality.

7. Naturally, Seth’s discussion since break reflects much of his material throughout Personal Reality. Then in Volume 1, see his comments just before 11:26 for Session 687: “I am saying that the individual self must become consciously aware of far more reality … Your species is in a time of change. There are potentials within the body’s mechanisms, in your terms, not as yet used. Developed, they can immeasurably enrich the [species] … If some changes are not made, the [species] as such will not endure.”

10. In Volume 1, quotations from Seth’s material just given on Atlantis are presented in Note 3 for Session 702.

Jane and I regard Seth’s latest delivery on Atlantis as still being only a partial explanation of the whole question of myth and fantasy versus “physical fact,” no matter what time schemes may be involved. We intend to explore it all as much as we can in “future” work.