“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I read the last part of Wednesday’s session to Jane from my notes. “I’ve got the nostalgic, uneasy feeling that he’s going to wind up the book soon,” she said, “especially after listening to that material just before the Atlantis stuff: I didn’t feel that way when I had the session, but I do now. I’ve said it before, I know, but this book started when we were thinking of moving, and now we’re settled in a new place, so that makes a good time to end it.”

I am well aware that the book raises many more questions than it presents answers for, and this has been my intent. The unknown reality will become known to the extent that you form new questions, and forget the old frameworks in which answers and myths were automatically given in response. If this book “works,” then many old questions will be seen as relatively meaningless, formed not after any intimate encounter with basic issues, but in response to old dogmas.

Give us a moment … Many of the questions you think were not answered in this book, however, have been answered — but from a different angle, colon: the answers presented in such a way that they will entice you to further creative thought.

This book had no chapters [in order] to further disrupt your accepted notions of what a book should be. There are different kinds of organizations present, however, and in any given section of the book, several levels of consciousness are appealed to at once. (Intently:) The threads of the work are interwoven so that various portions of your consciousness are sent out, so to speak, on separate journeys of thought and imagination. Yet these side trips are also related. They intertwine, not only through the psychic organization that I have given to “Unknown” Reality, but because of the great uniting nature within the consciousness of each reader.

(Pause.) I am a part of your unknown reality, and you are a part of mine. To some extent in these pages our realities meet. To the extent that you do not know yourself, you do not know your world. To the extent that you do not know yourself, you do not know your husband, or wife, or mother and father. To the extent that you do not know yourself, you do not know what God is. To the extent that you do not know yourself, you do not know what nature is. The unknown reality exists to the extent that you do not travel joyfully through the intimate lands of the psyche, to the extent that you do not directly experience your life as original (forcefully), but accept labels put on it by others. The unknown reality exists as a challenge, an exciting endeavor, as each individual becomes consciously aware of intimate subjective feeling. Do not overlay the personal daily aspects of your life with preconceived ideas about who you are, what you are, where you are, why you are. Become aware of the original nature of any given moment as it exists for you.

(10:50. Jane was soon out of trance — but she had a very, very long face.

(“I’d rather be starting a book than ending one, I guess.” She sat quietly. I thought she wanted to cry, but wouldn’t let herself do so.

(For the moment, though, we ate cookies and indulged in small talk. I could see that Jane was not only sad that the long project was finished for her, but uneasy, too; she was suddenly set loose, released from a framework that had come to be very familiar over the last 14½ months. Not that her new freedom hadn’t been expected. But she’s so creative that as soon as she is through with one undertaking she’s ready to launch into another; and this applies even though she’s been working on Psychic Politics outside of the Seth framework. That’s her focus in life [and mine, too]: the full commitment to artistic production. I’d often heard her comment about being in a kind of limbo between works. Her abilities demand use and release.

(“3. I suppose it’s quite evident why you finished ‘Unknown’ Reality right after we moved into our ‘new’ house, but will you reassure Jane by commenting on this, and on future works?”

(When Jane sat down again I read the questions to her. Our cat, Willy, jumped up into her lap. “I’m still appalled,” she said dejectedly. “Here my part in the thing is done, but you’ve got to live with it for a long time yet while you do the notes and typing. I wish there was some way each book could be turned into print instantly, so that we could go on to the next one … I can’t help it — every time Seth finishes a book I feel like crying.”

(“And why not? It’s a perfectly natural reaction,” I said. But an interesting point came out as we talked: Jane doesn’t experience that strong nostalgia when she finishes one of her “own” books.

(“Well, I’m just waiting now,” she said finally. “I can feel session material there, but I don’t know what it’ll be about. I’m just waiting until I get over the shock….”

Now: I will answer your questions on Wednesday. But I have a few remarks.

1. A note added four months later: Jane needn’t have worried. The sessions didn’t come to a halt after all. With the arrival of warmer weather we did take an occasional break from psychic work, but for the most part the sessions were held regularly even though Seth was through with “Unknown” Reality. Some of them were private, but Seth also covered a number of interesting topics of a more general nature — material we’d like to see published eventually. (His comments in the 750th session as to why “Unknown” Reality was written, are quoted in the Introductory Notes for Volume 1.)