“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane paused. She still habitually referred to “Unknown” Reality as a one-volume work — even as Seth himself did in the session this evening — despite the decision made 10 days ago to publish it in two volumes. “I feel sort of sorry,” she continued, “because here the sessions will stop again just after we got back into them. You’ll need time to finish the notes and do all that typing….”¹)

(Long pause.) The unknown reality, dash — Many of you, I know, would like to find in this book answers pertaining to Atlantis, the Bermuda Triangle, UFO’s³, and many other such questions. Those matters certainly seem pertinent in the framework of your experience and beliefs. You already have a great variety of explanations offered: Writers in many fields have produced books about such topics. By far the greater questions, however, are those pertaining to the unknown reality of the psyche, and those that relate to the kind of being who perceives in one way or another an Atlantis, a Bermuda Triangle, a UFO — for in greater terms, until you ask deeper questions about yourselves, these other experiences will remain mysterious. You cannot understand perceived events unless you understand who perceives them. You must learn more about the slant of your own consciousness before you are in a position to ask truly pertinent questions about the reality that you perceive.

(“No,” I said. At the same time, I was thinking as I wrote that Seth’s sentence, above: “You cannot understand perceived events unless you understand who perceives them,” embodied one of his best ideas in “Unknown” Reality.)

Again, Ruburt and Joseph have moved to a new place. Each reader has also journeyed to a new position within the psyche, however. This book is a bridge between realities. Reading it, each person sets out upon a psychic pilgrimage through the unknown realities of his or her own consciousness and experience. No one can predict the destination.

(“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.

(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.

2. I ended up by using Seth’s opening passages here, plus a couple of later ones from this session, in the notes introducing Volume 1.