“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(In the 586th session, earlier in this chapter, Seth stated that by the year 2075 the third Christ — Paul or Saul — would have enacted the Second Coming, exerting of course a profound effect upon religion and world history. Jane thought a period of less than a century was much too short a time to encompass so many dramatic changes. She wanted me to ask Seth if she had distorted this data while delivering it.

(When, for instance, would the personality be born, in order to have time to bring about such tremendous changes? We supposed there was a chance distortion had occurred.

(Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, was a cousin of Christ’s mother, Mary. John baptized Christ at the beginning of his ministry in A.D. 26 to 27, when he was about thirty. John was already active in his own ministry, and often called himself a “forerunner of one who would be nobler and stronger.” Shortly after he baptized Jesus, John was imprisoned by Herod Antipas in the fortress Machaerus, near the Dead Sea.

(I was finding Seth’s information intensely interesting. It was unavoidable in many cases, but Jane said she much preferred not to know anything about the historical period Seth would be discussing. She hadn’t read anything about the Dead Sea Scrolls, for instance, although I’d explained a little about them to her at various times. Nor is she familiar with the Bible.

My house was in the busiest, northwestern part of the city, just beyond what you would call the heart of town. Among my wares I sold bells for donkeys. This may not sound like a very grand product, and yet families on the farms outside of Rome found these highly useful. Each had a special sound, and a family could tell by the sound of the bell their own donkey from innumerable similar ones.

The bells were only a small portion of my business, which dealt largely with cloths and dyes, but they fascinated me. Because of my interest in them I did far more traveling about the countryside and the region than any prudent man should. The bells became my hobby. My curiosity drove me to journey in search of different kinds of bells, and led me into contact with many people I would not otherwise have encountered.

The Christians, generally speaking, did not want Roman converts. I was later one of these, and because of my nationality was never trusted. My part in that drama was simply to acquaint myself with its physical foundation; to be a participant, however small, in that era. Much later in your terms I would end up as a minor pope in the third century, meeting again some of those I had known — and, if you will forgive a humorous note, once more familiar with the sound of bells.

(“I had two illegitimate children [class laughter], a mistress that sneaked into my private study, a magician that I kept in case I did not do too well on my own, a housekeeper who was pregnant every year that I had her, and three daughters who joined a nunnery because I would not have them — and I am referred to in barely three paltry lines, for my reign did not last very long.

(“We had not yet begun the strong insistence upon indulgences, so I did not have that extra cash that indulgences would bring in. I believed and did not believe, as you [to a class member] earlier believed and did not believe, and I did a good job of hiding from myself what I believed and what I did not believe. And the higher one gets in power, the harder it is to hide such things from one’s self.

(“I did believe implicitly in the God in which I was brought up, and in that belief. It was only later that I wondered how such a god would choose me for such a position — and then I began to wonder. I had four lives following that of the most adverse circumstances, to make sure that I understood the difference between luxury and poverty, pride and compassion. And there were days in other centuries that I walked the same streets that I had walked as Pope. I touched these streets lightly as Pope; but as a peasant I walked with a heavy foot and great weight, until I learned the lessons that I had to learn, as all of you will also learn your own lessons.”

(Of course we would like to learn more about the incarnation in question. As Seth has already indicated, there is a wealth of information here waiting to be acquired. This brings up a dilemma Jane has confronted often: what to investigate out of the many possibilities available at any given time; then, the choice made, how to find the time to carry out the study.)

Now when I began contacting Ruburt and Joseph, I hid from them the fact of my numerous lives. (Smile): Ruburt, in particular, did not accept reincarnation, and the idea of such multiple life experiences would have been highly scandalous to him.

(Seth Two is dealt with at length in Chapter Seventeen of Jane’s book The Seth Material. This personality speaks occasionally in ESP class, but relatively seldom in our private sessions. In the outline Seth gave for this book before dictation began, we were told that Seth Two would be explained. Some of our questions for Chapter Twenty had concerned Seth Two also. I’d forgotten both points for the moment — hence my surprise.