Table Of Contentlane Roberts
An Aspect Psychology Book
PRENTICE-HALL, INC., ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J.
Books by Jane Roberts
THE SETH MATERIAL
SETH SPEAKS
The Eternal Validity of the Soul
THE EDUCATION OF OVERSOUL 7
THE NATURE OF PERSONAL REALITY
A Seth Book
ADVENTURES IN CONSCIOUSNESS
An Introduction to Aspect Psychology
DIALOGUES OF THE SOUL
AND MORTAL SELF IN TIME
PSYCHIC POLITICS
An Aspect Psychology Book
THE "UNKNOWN” REALITY
A Seth Book (in two volumes)
THE WORLD VIEW OF
PAUL CEZANNE
THE AFTERDEATH JOURNAL OF AN
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER
THE FURTHER EDUCATION OF
OVERSOUL SEVEN
THE NATURE OF THE PSYCHE:
Its Human Expression (A Seth Book)
Psychic Politics: An Aspect
Psychology Book by Jane Roberts
Copyright ©1976 by Jane Roberts
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form or by an means, except
for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
Prentice-Hall International, Inc., London
Prentice-Hall of Australia, Pty. Ltd., Sydney
Prentice-Hall of Canada, Ltd., Toronto
Prentice-Hall of India Private Ltd., New Delhi
Prentice-Hall of Japan, Inc., Tokyo
Prentice-Hall of Southeast Asia Ptc. Ltd., Singapore
109 8 76
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Roberts, Jane.
Psychic Politics
Includes index.
1. Psychical research. I. Title.
BF1031.R633 158M 76-22751
ISDN 0-13-7317 IVX
Contents
PART ONE / The Library and an Introduction to the
Super-Real
1 The Library 3
2 A Private View of the “Super-Real.” Models for Physical
Reality and Psychic Structures 20
3 Models and Beloved Eccentrics 35
4 Rob and the Roman Captain. Models and Reincarnational
Selves 48
5 Glimpses and Direct Encounters. The Fly and the Book 57
6 The James Material and the Carl Jung Text 64
7 More from the Library. Seth Explains the James Material
and Introduces “World Views” 77
S Unofficial Contents of the Mind 87
9 The Ape and the Silver Guide 99
10 The Boy with the Hole in His Chest. A Young Celibate,
and the Book of the Gods III
11 Time and Time Structures. The Shape of Time 120
12 The Jamaican Woman, “Counterparts,” and Four-Fronted
Selves 130
13 The Exploding Psyche and Strands of Consciousness 148
14 Back to the Library. Climbing Up the Steps of the Psyche,
and the Girl Who Tried to Love Everybody 165
15 Seth: On Love and Hate. Inner Codes 178
PART TWO / Voices from the World
16 Voices from “the Underground,” and the Politics of the
Focus Personality 193
17 A Probable Class 208
18 Sex and Energy: Some Inventive Versions. Seth by the
Ouijafuls 222
19 I Hear a Voice and There’s No One There. Official and
Unofficial Sequences 238
20 We Move, in More Ways Than One, and “Special Places” 247
PART THREE / Toward a New Politics of the Psyche,
and an Alternate Model for Civilization
to Follow
21 The Codicils, and an Alternate Model for Civilization to
Follow 261
22 Personal Application of Codicils. The Gods Take Off Their
Clothes. Psychic Civilizations and Psychic Estates 280
23 The Natural Contours of the Psyche 295
24 Stages of Consciousness 311
25 The Heroic Dimension and Heroic Personages 326
26 Toward a New Politics of the Psyche. A New Allegiance,
and Heroic Impulses 345
27 “Come to the Mountain,” and Seth on the Safe Universe 360
Index 370
Part One
THE LIBRARY
AND AN INTRODUCTION
TO THE SUPER-REAL
Chapter 1
The Library
We’ve just moved into a house, and now our Water
Street quarters are vacant. As I write, I no longer hear the
bridge traffic at the corner intersection or watch the pigeons on
our roof above the parking lot. It was in that large living room
that the Seth sessions first began. In the beginning there was
just Rob and me, artist and writer, husband and wife, experi
menting as millions do with a Ouija board. By the time we
left those apartments, nearly forty students were crowding
the living room each Tuesday; Seth, my “trance personality,”
had dictated two books and was nearly finished with another
one; and I’d written three of my own. More than that: When
I walked into that apartment house for the first time, I was
thirty-one; and when I left for the final time, I was forty-five.
The Seth sessions began when I was thirty-five.
3
4 The Library
In the beginning years we were very secretive about
the sessions, telling only a few close friends but not the
neighbors. A couple of times, Seth’s booming voice carried
through the night air. Once a neighbor came to investigate. It
was summer; the windows were open, and he must have been
struck by the odd quality of Seth’s voice: deep, masculine
like, and accented in a strange fashion we’ve never been able
to categorize. Anyway, when the knock came at the door,
Rob turned on the television—loud. And our neighbor saw
just the two of us, innocently sitting there. The man tried to
explain about the voice he heard. Rob said, “It must have
been the television program,” and our neighbor went away,
shaking his head.
In a way, Seth is like a television program, in that
I’m tuned in to another channel of reality during sessions so
that Seth’s “program” plays over my own, or temporarily
supersedes my own official station of consciousness. Some
times I think that Seth is like some public education channel;
invisible dials whirl in my head, and he clicks on. Other times
I think of Seth as a director of some multidimensional com
munications network with me lucky enough to possess a
unique set to pick up his stations. Certainly he seems to
direct many of my other excursions into realms of conscious
ness beyond the norm.
More and more “stations” seem available to me all
the time, yet always Seth is the general “commentator”: the
master of ceremonies, the newscaster, the genial guide
through jungles and deserts and mountains of the inner mind.
In other words, one way or another, I get signals
from strange lands. I always have, though when I was growing
up I just labeled everything as inspiration and let it go at that.
Finally inspiration had a voice of its own and a personage,
Seth, to boot. So Seth writes his books and I write mine, and
each succeeding stable alteration of consciousness brings new
messages from these alien yet somehow familiar inner lands
of reality.
Listening to these messages, translating them,
writing them down is life to me. Seth says that being is its
own justification, and for a while I thought that perhaps I
The Library 5
wrote to justify my life. It took some time for me to realize
that being is writing to me. When I’m not “turned on” in my
own particular fashion, my being seems dimmer. I become
glum. So when I’ve finished one book, I can’t wait to begin
another.
When I completed Adventures in Consciousness,
then, my last book, I went around in a huff for a while.
Nothing contented me, although Seth was dictating The
“Unknown ” Reality in our twice-weekly sessions. The days
disappeared into weeks and I grew more restless. I felt discon
nected from my being. So I began the series of steps I usually
take whenever I want to contact deeper levels of my own
consciousness. I did some watercolor painting, but that didn’t
seem to work. Then one afternoon early in October I wrote
the following poem, half angrily, depicting my situation.
Invitation
Ah love this stubborn mortal self,
once more trying to contact its soul,
and wondering on an autumn afternoon
bow best to trick it from its high domain.
The mortal self says, “Dear soul,
The earth is beautiful this time of year
and certainly some part of you is touched
by the leaves dizzily falling everywhere,
and by the misty autumn dusk
that swirls around the neighborhood
like a ghost on a treasure hunt.
But if you aren’t,
isn’t it enough that I’d like to talk?
You ’re my soul, after all,
so I don’t see why I need an appointment
to get a moment of your time.
“I’ll meet you any place at all,
though some structure seems to help,
