“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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.)

(10:59.) Give us a moment … (Jane, in trance, lit a cigarette. ) Your ideas of Atlantis are partially composed of future memories. They are psychic yearnings toward the ideal civilization — patterns within the psyche, even as each fetus has within it the picture of its own most ideal fulfillment toward which it grows.

(End at 11:10 P.M. Jane’s trance had been excellent. “You don’t have to put this in,” she said, “but I feel like I do every once in a while — I really let it out — I feel relieved and ready to collapse.

(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.

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.

11. I found it quite difficult to extract from the 747th session the material I wanted for this note on Atlantis, so interwound is it with closely related information on early man and animal kingdoms, the expanding-universe theory, archaeology, Jane’s other work, All That Is, and so forth. (Some of those topics have been discussed in earlier sessions or notes, but no such references are given here, nor is any new backup material offered.)

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.