“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“In Seth Speaks I tried to describe certain extensions of your own reality in terms that my readers could understand. In The Nature of Personal Reality, I tried to extend the boundaries of individual existence as it is usually experienced … to give the reader hints that would increase practical, spiritual and physical enjoyment and fulfillment in daily life. Those books were dictated by me in a more or less straight narrative style. In ‘Unknown’ Reality I went further, showing how the experiences of the psyche splash outward into the daylight, so to speak. I hope that [in those two books] through my dictation and through Ruburt’s and Joseph’s experiences, the reader can see the greater dimensions that touch ordinary living, and sense the psyche’s greater magic. ‘Unknown’ Reality required much more work on Joseph’s part, and that additional effort in itself was a demonstration that the psyche’s events are very difficult to pin down in time. Seemingly its action goes out in all directions…. As Joseph did his notes, it became apparent that some events … seemed to have no beginning or end.”

I hope these Introductory Notes have prepared the reader to take up “Unknown” Reality in the middle, more or less, with the 705th session. But as I wrote in introducing Volume 1, whatever comments I make along the way will explain Jane’s trance performances from my view, as best I can offer them — her behavior while she’s “under,” the varied, powerful or muted use of her voice as she speaks for Seth, her stamina and humor in sessions, the speed or slowness of her delivery. But above all I try to help the reader appreciate the uncanny feeling of energy and/or intelligence — of personality — in the sessions, as exemplified by and through Seth; conscious energy, then, taking a guise that’s at least somewhat comprehensible to us, in our terms of reality, so that we can understand what’s happening.

The accumulated material further added to the length of the work, which was considerable. Finally we chose to divide “Unknown” Reality into two volumes. This meant that our readers could have access to part of the manuscript while I was preparing the rest. Seth agreed with our decision.

It isn’t necessary to repeat many more of the Introductory Notes for Volume 1 here, although I’ll ask the reader to review them in connection with the material presented below. But the most important thing about those notes, I think, is Jane’s own account of her subjective relationship with Seth.

Many good things will be found in Volume 2. Perhaps I can intrigue our readers by giving Seth’s headings for the three sections it will contain. [...]

[...] Then she reminded me of Seth’s final lines for this first volume (given after break ended at 11:05 in the 704th session), and I suggest that the reader review that material now.

[...] The reader is invited to experience his or her own “unknown reality” through the study of dreams and practice elements, and to try for psychic travel into other realities. [...]

Among other information in Section 5, Seth gives considerable material designed to help the reader achieve psychic travel; related here is his session on dreams and dream photography. [...]

I will tell the reader how he sees what he sees, or hears what he hears, and why. I hope to show through the entire book that the reader himself is independent of his physical image; and I hope, myself, to give him some methods that will prove my thesis to him. [...]

There will be a final chapter in which I will ask the reader to close his eyes and become aware of the reality in which I exist, and of his own inner reality. [...] In this chapter I will invite the reader to use his inner senses, to see me in his own way. [...]

My message to the reader will be: “basically, you are no more of a physical personality than I am, and in telling you of my reality I tell you of your own.” [...]

While my communications will come exclusively through Ruburt at all times, to protect the integrity of the material, I will invite the reader to become aware of me as a personality, so that he may then realize that communication from other realities is possible, and that he himself is therefore open to perception that is not physical.

What is necessary is for the reader to closely review Volume 1 before digging into Volume 2. There isn’t any better way to grasp the complex themes of that first book. [...]

[...] I thank each reader for his or her patience in accepting the publication of Dreams in two volumes.”

[...] I’m also demanding the very best insight, an excellence of understanding, from each reader, even though it may not be easy to summon those qualities. [...]

[...] Readers will benefit in various fashions, according to their own conditions and intents, but every reader will benefit to some degree or another — and each reader will become reacquainted with those inner springs of vitality and well-being that are so important in human experience.

[...] (Pause.) If any of you, my readers, are in poor health, or generally unhappy, no one is asking you to pretend that those conditions do not exist. [...]

(9:25.) In Seth Speaks I tried to describe certain extensions of your own reality in terms that my readers could understand. [...] I tried to give the reader hints that would increase practical, spiritual, and physical enjoyment and fulfillment in daily life. [...] Hopefully in that book, through my dictation and through Ruburt’s and Joseph’s experiences, the reader could see the greater dimensions that touch ordinary living, and sense the psyche’s magic. [...]

[...] Ruburt is far more lenient than most of my readers in that regard. [...]

In a way, of course, my own experience is divorced from that of my readers. [...]

The books require far more on the part of the reader than most books. Therefore our readers feel a sense of accomplishment when they are done.

[...] You have a loyal core of readers who were already acquainted generally with “occult” books—but to a larger overall extent, that is a steady but dead-end road. [...]

Moreover, from this other general (paperback) market, you will consistently pick up a newer group of readers. [...]

Many of these people also are generally not book readers. [...]

[...] However, I know that my readers exist, and therefore I shall ask each of them, now, to grant me the same privilege.

My readers may suppose that they are physical creatures, bound within physical bodies, imprisoned within bone, flesh, and skin. [...]

[...] I hope that this book will serve to release the deeply intuitive self within each of my readers, and to bring to the foreground of consciousness whatever particular insights will serve you most.

I can say this to each of my readers honestly (smile): I am older than you are, at least in terms of age as you think of it.

As Seth makes clear, however, this book is not a dry treatise about “the psyche,” but is constructed in such a way that it will put each reader in more direct contact with his or her individual psyche. It includes many exercises to acquaint each person with that deeper portion of the self, and invites the reader to search into his or her ideas and experiences on many levels.

[...] They were enunciated in Seth’s own peculiarly accented tones; accompanied by gestures in a living performance that I hope the reader will keep in mind.

As most of our readers know, Seth began calling me Ruburt, and my husband, Rob, Joseph, early in the sessions. [...]

[...] Now we will include usual session notes, but the reader will have to keep track of the development of the theories or correlate them with previous Seth books at his or her leisure.

[...] (I’m correcting the page proofs for Volume 7 now.) We had never called those sessions in Volume 7 deleted, though, and I’m happy now to trust that they may help readers gain insight into some of their own challenges. [...] With the publication of Volumes 7 and 8 I’d like to hear from readers about benefits they may have derived from experimenting with Seth’s ideas. [...]

[...] I trust that I’m offering enough intriguing hints in this essay to keep readers interested in pursuing Jane’s and Seth’s and my loving work. [...]

In the meantime, I thank each reader for caring. [...]

He was supposed to ask the question, and so was each reader. For one thing, while I realize the importance of specific terms, I do not want you as a reader to become so dependent upon terms that coming across one you have read before, you instantly categorize it. For another thing, each time I reintroduce such information I do so from another direction, so to speak, so that you as a reader are meant to approach it from a different angle also. [...]

[...] In Session 890 see his material on both EE units and CU’s. While reading tonight’s material, the reader might keep these brief passages from that session in mind: “Each unit of consciousness (or CU) intensifies, magnifies its own intents to be—and, you might say, works up from within itself an explosive spark of primal desire that “explodes” into a process that causes physical materialization. [...]

In my other books I used many accepted ideas as a springboard to lead readers into other levels of understanding. [...]

[...] These ideas in this book are meant to expand the private reality of each reader. [...]

[...] I comment now and then about photographs that belong to the Butts family [including Jane Roberts], yet any reader can look at old photographs and ask the same questions, applying what is said here to private experience. [...]

[...] The letter I’d had published recently in the November issue of Coordinate Point International, describing Jane’s challenges, had come to the attention of the reader in St. Paul, MN, who had called Maude with the idea of a fund. [...]

You have little idea (long pause) of the magical feeling of discovery (pause) with which many of our readers regard our work. [...]

[...] Many readers yearn to play some part in that world. [...]

[...] Each of my readers plays a game in which the egotistical conscious self pretends not to know what the whole self definitely does know. [...]

[...] Its characteristics can be given to some degree, and indeed most of my readers could find out these characteristics for themselves if they were highly enough motivated, and if this was their main concern. [...]

[...] For now, however, we will simply be concerned with the entity or soul, the larger self that whispers even now in the hidden recesses of each reader’s experience. [...]

I will tell the reader how he sees what he sees, or hears what he hears, and why. I hope to show through the entire book that the reader himself is independent of his physical image, and I hope, myself, to give him some methods that will prove my thesis to him.

There will be a final chapter in which I will ask the reader to close his eyes and become aware of the reality in which I exist, and of his own inner reality. [...] In this chapter I will invite the reader to use his “inner senses,” to see me in his own way.

My message to the reader will be: “Basically, you are no more of a physical personality than I am, and in telling you of my reality I tell you of your own.”

While my communications will come exclusively through Ruburt at all times, to protect the integrity of the material, I will invite the reader to become aware of me as a personality, so that he may then realize that communication from other realities is possible, and that he himself is therefore open to perception that is not physical.

[...] At the same time, Jane and I want each book to be complete in itself, so that the “new” reader can begin to understand what’s happening from the very beginning. [...]

[...] Jane has also been helped a great deal.] So our aim with the Seth books is to let Seth have his say, to add some thoughts of our own, and to trust that the feelings and meanings in all of this will evoke beneficial responses in each reader. [...]

[...] The two of you — for you are both involved — have not only initiated a new framework from which you and others can view the nature of reality more clearly, but you also had to start from scratch, so to speak, to get the material, learn to trust it, and then to apply it to your own lives — even while ‘the facts were not all in yet.’ At no point did you have all of the material to draw upon, as for example, your readers do at any given point. [...]

[...] Even now, while I’m thinking about how to put Mass Events together for the reader, last night Seth came through with new material that he said will be part of another book. [...]

(9:43.) I felt that my work was being contaminated, and more, I was annoyed and disappointed by those readers who could apparently be so taken in by those other Seths. [...]

[...] And in her introduction to Seth Speaks (1972), she quoted Seth from the 510th session for January 19, 1970: “While my communications will come exclusively through Ruburt (Jane) at all times, to protect the integrity of the material, I will invite the reader to become aware of me as a personality….”

[...] Such a procedure could have turned into a creative tragedy for us and for our readers.

[...] From the comic book reader to the scholar, each will find a point of contact within my work. The comic book reader will interpret it in his own way, and perhaps I will emerge as a supersoul instead of a superman (with humor).

(With much humor and irony:) What comic book reader wants to bother with a Clark Kent who, before his transformation, distracts the reader with such beside-the-point questions as “What am I doing? [...]

Or worse—what comic book reader wants Clark Kent to shout out from the phone booth, or wherever “You can do this too, or your version, because we all have a reality in which we are Clark Kent and Superman at one and the same time?” Such people simply want Superman to perform his miracles.

There were other reasons, in that the paperback Seth Material is meant to be read first, and lead readers into Seth Speaks. [...] When the ESP book is reprinted (Jane heard about this from F. Fell this week), readers will largely be already acquainted with my work, and bring that extra knowledge to that early book (smile), hence enriching its potentials for them. [...]

Both varieties of books allow the reader a built-in distance that provides a cushion against cultural shock: the story is, after all, secondhand. Castaneda told his own story, but it was still secondhand, because his own opaqueness added the necessary distance that protected the reader.

Castaneda’s books, for all their seeming unconventionality, had a niche to fall into, for here was the quite conventional scholar exploring a culture, even of the mind; not his own—but safely, within an academic framework to which he then returned, and to which academic readers could identify. [...]

[...] The point, however, was always made that Don Juan’s inner culture was alien—natural perhaps to Don Juan, but not to Castaneda or to the reader.

Fiction, again, puts a lovely distance between the reader and experience. [...]