“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Yesterday Jane received from her publisher the galley proofs for her book of poetry, Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time.¹ The story of that work’s creation is interwound throughout Personal Reality.

(I read to Jane again the three questions I’d noted down for Seth during break in Monday’s session. As I suspected he might do, Seth began this evening’s session by dealing with the second one. Not all of his material tonight is given over to questions, however; much of the rest of it, covering matters other than those relating to “Unknown” Reality, is deleted.)

Now: In a way, it is quite difficult to tell you what I have been doing with my time (humorously emphatic) while I have been involved in the production of “Unknown” Reality — and therefore, to some extent at least, inclined toward your time.²

In a manner of speaking your experienced, practical reality is made up of events that seem entire to you, or relatively complete, while from my dimension it is apparent that your recognized events are simply portions of larger ones. I move naturally, then, in a realm of greater dimensionalized events.

Now: An artist does the same thing in different terms, when he or she imagines the probable versions that a painting, or a book or a sculpture, for example, might take. (Pause.) The artist does not usually understand, however, that those probable art productions do literally exist; he perceives only the final, physically chosen work. Speaking simply, some of us are able to hold intact the nature of our own identities while following patterns of probable realities in which we also play a part.

In your reality, the “Unknown” Reality we have just finished is the only version of that manuscript. Instead it is, of course, the only version you recognize. When we are working on such a project here (in your reality), we are working on probable books also, and those are as real as your official one. In ways too difficult to explain now, your probabilities are connected by certain themes, intents, purposes. Some of these appear as subsidiary interests in your own lives, for example. Others may well be recognized by you as prime concerns, and still others may be so latent that you are unaware of them. So we have been working on a probable “Unknown” Reality — in fact, on many probable “Unknown” Realities. Not mere versions, but variations.

In one reality, of course, the work was finished at the Foster Avenue house (in Elmira, New York). In another it was finished in Sayre (Pennsylvania).

Now that is what I have been doing as far as your reality is concerned — that is, in my relationship with you. It is a multidimensional version of what Ruburt does in simple terms when he writes a book of his own.³

Now that is a sensible arrangement. He is the one who has to deal primarily with the practical aspects of our relationship, and in the business of translating my reality into your world.

(Long pause at 9:56.) I quite approve, for in greater terms I do not belong in your living room in that particular fashion. My reality is far more apparent than any apparition’s. Ruburt does well because he explores so cleverly, and keeps his strands of reality in good order.⁶

Any such appearances, by the way, would also add to much superstitious nonsense. On the other hand, there is much for Ruburt to learn about my reality. Until he understood the inward order of events⁸ he would not be able to meet me there — so the library can serve us both in that regard.

The Nature of Personal Reality [our last book] is there for others to follow. Others, however, did not have a hand in producing it. They will try out the ideas, many of them, to the best of their ability, and learn and gain much — all the time (much more forcefully.) hanging on safely to the banners of conventional beliefs. Ruburt has allowed himself no such comforts. He should remember that many people have far greater hassles … with health, personal relationships, finances and vocations, and without any satisfying accomplishments to offset their misfortunes.

In a way, Ruburt’s book (Psychic Politics) will continue our material from another viewpoint while you are preparing our “Unknown” Reality.

(11:01 P.M. And so Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality is finished. Now I want to briefly summarize for the reader two subjects — “house connections” and ESP class — that have been mentioned often in the sessions for Section 6. See notes 13 and 14.)

2. See the material on Seth’s concept of simultaneous time as given in the concluding notes for Session 724. Included are some very intriguing excerpts from the 14th session, which was held over 11 years ago. Seth: “While I am not affected by time on your plane, I am affected by something resembling time on my plane … It is therefore still a reality of some kind to me.” In this case, I added the underline myself for emphasis.

To Seth’s remarks in that early session I’d now like to add what he said a decade later in our time. From the 514th session for Chapter 2 of Seth Speaks: “Consciousness is not dependent upon form, as I have said, and yet it always seeks to create form. We do not exist in any time framework as you know it. Minutes, hours, or years have lost both their meaning and their fascination. We are quite aware of the time situations within other systems, however, and we must take them into account in our communications. Otherwise what we say would not be understood.”

3. Following Seth’s material in these paragraphs, then, there are of course a number of other Janes and Robs busily living out their lives in a cluster of associated probable realities — and all of those Janes and Robs are just as real to Seth as we are. I’ve had the thought before. It’s a somewhat chastening one, I said to Jane, joking, since it means that from Seth’s viewpoint we could be just two more individuals.

All sorts of interesting questions arise. Perhaps Seth likes some of those other versions of ourselves more than he does us. ( I didn’t ask him if I was right, though.) It might even be that his favorite Jane inhabits one probable reality, his favorite Rob another. How does Seth tell all of us apart? What age differences are there among us? In which reality did we produce the “best” version of “Unknown” Reality? The worst? Moreover — what do all of those other Janes and Robs think of their Seths? And so on….

4. Jane describes in Chapter 1 of Politics the onset of her ability to perceive her psychic library. For library material in Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality, see the notes at the start of Session 714, and Seth’s dictation for Session 715.

6. Seth spoke of “strands of reality” here, we think, because today Jane had been going over her material on the stages of consciousness and strands of consciousness for chapters 24 and 25, respectively, of Politics.

8. Appendix 18 for Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality contains much material “on the complex relationships involving Jane-Ruburt-Seth [and also Rob-Joseph].” Jane devoted Chapter 15 of Adventures to a discussion of the inner order of events and “unofficial” perceptions.

14. This final note is added well over a year after Jane finished delivering “Unknown” Reality. As I wrote at the start of the 740th session, Jane suspended ESP class on February 26, 1975, to give us time to not only prepare for our move to the hill house (in March), but to settle down afterward.

The longer we went without class, the more Jane and I saw how much its demise paralleled the ending of “Unknown” Reality. Both events were inevitable, we came to understand; both had had their time; our regrets about the finishing of both are real, while simultaneously we heartily agree that the nature of life in this physical — or “camouflage” — reality is one of unending change and renewal. Even though we may never again see many of those counterparts we’d known, we realize that all of us are indissolubly joined. Nor is the fact that a number of us are physically separated (or invisible to each of the others) of great importance, for as Seth told us recently in a private session:

“In a strange fashion, of course, the word ‘invisibility’ has meaning only in your kind of world. There is no such thing as true psychological invisibility … The physical world is dependent upon the relationship of everything from electrons to molecules to mountains to oceans, and in the scheme of reality these are all interwoven with exquisite order, spontaneity, and a logic beyond any with which you are familiar.