Seth Jane Roberts

Jane Roberts, an author, poet and psychic, wrote a number of books including The Education of Oversoul Seven and Adventures in Consciousness. She and her husband, artist Robert F. Butts, are the authors of the Seth books.

The Seth Books

Roberts went into trance and dictated text channeled from a non-physical entity named Seth (that she believed might be a part of herself). Roberts and her husband, who transcribed what she dictated, published these books as a series. The list of titles includes The Seth Material, Seth Speaks, The Nature of Personal Reality, The Nature of the Psyche, Its Human Expression, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, The Unknown Reality, and Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment.

The books attributed to Seth discuss the nature of physical reality, the origins of the universe, the theory of evolution, the many worlds hypothesis, the Christ story, the purpose of life, among other subjects.

In many ways Seth's arguments are considered radical. For example he asserted that time and space are illusions and that both the past and future are accessible from the present. He said that each person lives many lives simultaneously (rather than several re-incarnated lives consecutively). He conveyed that each person creates their experience within the reality that all share, similar to the doctrine of responsibility assumption. In an argument reminiscent of the "many worlds hypothesis", Seth said there are multiple realities, each as valid as any of the others.

Jane Roberts wrote a number of books not dictated by Seth, which discuss the same ideas and how they affected her life. These are, among others, Adventures in Consciousness, Psychic Politics and The God of Jane.

Whereas Edgar Cayce, another psychic who also spoke about the nature of reality, re-incarnation etc, founded a school (now known as the Association for Research and Enlightenment), Seth said that he did not wish to do so since reality is an individual experience, in his view there are no closed systems (that is, in a sense all things are possible) and he did not want to constrain the nature of anyone else's experience.

Quotations

• "Nothing exists - neither rock, mineral, plant, animal or air - that is not filled with consciousness of its own kind. So you stand amid a constant vital commotion, a gestalt of aware energy, and you are yourselves physically composed of conscious cells that carry within themselves the realization of their own identity, that cooperate willingly to form the corporeal structure that is your physical body", Seth/Jane Roberts.
• "You create your reality according to your beliefs and expectations, therefore you should examine these carefully. If you do not like some aspect of your world, then examine your own expectations", Seth/Jane Roberts
• "Do not personally give any more conscious consideration"..."to events that you do not want to happen. Any such concentration, to whatever degree, ties you in with those probabilities, so concentrate upon what you want...", Seth's 891st session.

External references and links

• Complete list of Jane Roberts' published writing (http://www.newworldview.com/library/Noonan_B_Works_Jane_Roberts.html)
• Roberts, Jane (1974). The Nature of Personal Reality. Amber-Allen Publishing. ISBN 1-878424-06-8
• Roberts, Jane (1981). The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. Amber-Allen Publishing. ISBN 1-878424-21-1
• The Seth online community and discussion group since the '80s (http://www.dreamworld.org/sethworks)
• Seth Network International (http://209.81.10.123/) - contains interesting material although Network inactive
• Edgar Cayce's Association for Research and Enlightenment (http://www.edgarcayce.org/)