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A Psychic Manifesto by Jane Roberts

by Jane Roberts

1

My life is its own definition.
So is yours.
Let us leave the priests
to their hells and heavens,
and confine
the scientists
to their dying universe
and accidentally created stars.
Let us each dare
to open our dream’s door,
and explore
the unofficial thresholds,
where we begin.

Let us refuse to be defined
as sinful selves
or creatures of a blighted species,
and instead
dare to recognize
within our dreaming hides
the grace of mental animals,
in which soul and flesh
are intermixed
with a natural alchemy;
so that awake, we dream,
and dreaming, wake,
straddling
life and death alike,
with an inner knowledge
that confounds
the dreary ministers
and scientists.

2.

The flesh needs no absolution.
Its cells are innocent
as gods,
whose hidden
divine multiplications
compute our smallest acts.

How many eons did it take
for our cells to learn
arithmetic,
since they are microscopic structures,
minus brains,
and science would say,
lacking wit
or consciousness?

How did they learn
to construct
images of bone and blood,
choosing just the proper
combinations
that add up
to you and me?

3.

I’ve yet to decipher
a fraction
of my body’s knowledge,
though its molecular
mathematics
allows me to write
this line.
These thoughts journey
through my brain
by ancient pathways
that I cannot claim,
as if my body’s memories
predate its own time,
rising from miniature civilizations,
whose coded arts
set my life in motion
and are expressed
through who I am.

4.

The facts of life
are the heart’s events,
that persist
beyond measurements.
The heart deals
with dream equations
that would dazzle a computer;
for the dreamer’s
laboratory has no walls,
and his experiments
combine time and space
with a spontaneous knack
that defies
all formulas.

If hearts had to hold back
their beating,
until science proved
that life had meaning,
then we’d have
no life at all.
But the heart beats
predictably,
giving its own evidence
of a life experiment
no technology
can duplicate;
and each beat comes
like the first –
singular, mysterious,
from sources
outside the grasp
of objective
processes.

5.

Each birth is unofficial,
maverick,
rising alike
from strands of love
to ancient vanished relatives,
and tied to a future, unknown self
who beckons
the dream-eyed fetus on
into life’s bright scheme,
bravely daring unknown passageways
that lead
to life’s threshold,
carrying
conscious cargo
from one universe to another.
You made that journey.
So did I.

6.

All that we are was once
wrapped in a tissue
parchment
and coiled like onion skin,
imprinted
with life’s hieroglyphics.
Fingers and toes were
smaller
than decimals, yet alive.
And brains-to-be,
measuring less
than an inch,
each contained
all the ingredients we’d need,
to think these thoughts.
What perfect transistors,
growing their own
future parts!
How were they wired
when, as science says,
we’re only a combination
of dumb elements,
come alive in a universe
formed by chance?

Some chance, that my hands
didn’t keep growing more and more
fingers, but stopped at ten,
learning to count
before I did;
and that my neck knew
where my head should be
before my eyes
could even read
a book of
anatomy.

7

So let us dismiss
all modern or ancient myths
that tell us that our genes
are flawed by primal lust,
or worse,
cursed by a revengeful god;
so that the flesh is filled
with sin’s contents,
overflowing with iniquity;
or that we are natural killers –
animals run amok,
caught between
our own jealous genes
and the uncaring stars,
a schizophrenic species,
whose most magnificent acts
are stamped with the mark of Cain

Let us look instead
to our direct experience,
and listen to the messages
that arise
in unofficial ways,
bypassing dictums
and theologies.
Let us begin
by trusting once again
the personal contact of self
with self,
and self with world.
Let us observe
the facts of heart
and mind alike,
and refuse to accept
any theories that deny
our own experience.

8.

My life is its own definition.
So is yours.
Our consciousness is
self-evident.
Are dreams not facts,
when each and every nighttime skull
is filled to its
nocturnal brim
with a commotion of images
to be found there,
and nowhere else
isolated from the world
like a master experiment?

But no one watches
or makes notes.
Then let us collect
our own dream species,
wander among vast
unexplored dream elements,
and discover for ourselves
those inner worlds
where mind and will are born
and merge,
and descend from dreams’
wild hilltops.

I have opened time’s window
not just once,
but often,
catching just a glance
of tomorrow’s evidence
before it was due;
and so have many others,
surprising some hour
before its time.
And just one such clue
is enough
to shatter all philosophies
that say we’re stuck
like flies
in a jar of time.

So let us forsake
our ancient documents
and communes.
Leave the statues of the gods
to their plaster-of-paris parks,
and let the scientists
count invisible particles,
hypnotizing
themselves away.
Let us run
from doom’s prophets,
whatever names they bear,
and let them sputter
of catastrophes alone –
waiting the world’s end
(huddled, the survivors-to-be
wait in the worried air).

But hold the world
to your mind’s ear,
and hear
the victorious roar
of life’s waves
splashing against the shores
of mind and sense;
bursting tumultuously
from sources
echoed in our dreams,
as the images
of our desires
leap
into the swell
of space and time.

From The God of Jane – A Psychic Manifesto, Chapter 15 Copyright © 1981 by Jane Roberts

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