“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Just before Seth began The Nature of Personal Reality: A Seth Book, for instance, I found myself embarked on a new venture I call the Sumari development. Sumari refers to a “family” of consciousnesses who share certain overall characteristics. There is a language involved that isn’t a language in usual terms. I think that it operates as a psychological and psychic framework that frees me from normal verbal reference, letting me express and communicate inner feelings and data that lie just beneath formalized word patterns.

The Sumari development constantly expanded as Seth produced this book. Now various altered states of consciousness are involved. In one I write Sumari poetry and in another I translate what I’ve written. At a different level I sing Sumari songs, showing musical knowledge and accomplishment far beyond my normal talents or background. The songs can also be translated, but they communicate emotionally whether or not the words are understood. In yet another state of consciousness, material is received that is supposed to represent remnants of ancient Speaker manuscripts. (These are also translated later.) Seth defines the Speakers as teachers, both physical and nonphysical, who constantly interpret and communicate inner knowledge through the ages. My husband has also written Sumari, but I have to translate it for him.

Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time, The Speakers, and some Sumari poetry are being combined into a book that will be published soon by Prentice-Hall. I consider it a companion book to this one. It shows what was happening in my personal reality while Seth was writing his book on the subject, and reveals how the creative impetus splashes out into all areas of the personality. Seth often refers to the poems and to the experiences that initiated them. Many of those events occurred as I tried to understand the relationship between his world and mine, and the connection between inner and outer experience.

I know that Seven and his teacher, Cyprus, exist in certain terms, yet their reality can’t be explained either in the usual fact world. For example, the novel included many Sumari poems and portions of Speaker manuscripts; and when I sing Sumari I identify with Cyprus, who is supposed to be a fictional character. I could also tune into Seven for help with personal challenges, I discovered.

The Sumari development, along with the experiences connected with The Education of Oversoul 7 and The Nature of Personal Reality, brought up so many questions that I was forced to seek a larger framework in which to understand what was happening. As a result I’m working on a book called Aspect Psychology, which I hope will present a theory of personality large enough to contain man’s psychic nature and activities. Seth refers to Aspects, as we call it, in this present book, and it should be published sometime in 1975.