“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I am pleased to see that our old friend Mark has seen fit to avail himself at last of my company. It is better to be late than not to arrive at all, and I should most assuredly give him a most hearty welcome. We will have something to say to him before I am finished tonight.

Our witness, our Mark, has had many experiences, as far as what you call apparitions are concerned, and in his case these have been of various types and he has seen them for various reasons.

The discipline, for Mark or for anyone else, is difficult to achieve, in that what is necessary is a passive discipline rather than an aggressive discipline. The passive discipline allows for a fuller perception. It also helps prevent the conscious ego from snapping too quickly back, as is what happens often in Mark’s case.

This passive discipline also allows inner data enough durability to be realized. Mark needs to wait and listen longer when such experiences present themselves. He accepts them, but then in an intellectual attempt to capture them he smothers them to death.

This one, that one, is one of your favorites, and one of Ruburt’s, and for that reason I myself do feel a warmth. I would suggest that Mark also exercise himself in the use of psychological time. He should progress fairly rapidly. His impulsive nature is actually somewhat more restrained in this life than it was in the previously past life. Nevertheless, one of the problems for the personality is still the need for a more disciplined ego.

Three lives ago, Mark was contained in a remarkably cruel and violent nature. He is now extremely kind to make up for past cruelties. In the immediately previous life he was a woman, living in your own west, midwest.

He was erratic. You might say that Mark was too erratic to be erotic. He at that time was fairly wealthy, and gave away much money in a subconscious attempt to make up for the aggressive and cruel male existence just previous. The choice in the past life of a woman’s personality represented a somewhat understandable weakness on his part, and yet it also represented bravery in a sense.

His mother now subconsciously remembers that earlier existence, and his unfeeling attitude as a husband. This is a beautiful example. Mark still attempts to override an earlier propensity toward insensitiveness, and is therefore now sensitive and impulsive.

Mark’s whole family, in fact, have been in one way or another connected in a rather unusual manner through at least three successive existences, and the family of course has interchanged roles accordingly. They are still working out old problems, and in some cases are doing very well.

There is also another member of this particular family who is presently a woman, and there is also another member who is presently a man. Neither of these two were intimately connected with Mark’s family for the past two lives, and represent the only exception.

Sometimes you read me correctly. Mark was one of your children in the existence of which I have spoken. One of Mark’s present brothers was a son of Mark’s when he was a woman in Iowa.

The oldest brother. Mark made an exceptionally good mother.

I can see from your discussions that some short explanations are in order. On your part, Mark, overimpulsiveness merely represents an overcompensation for early aggressiveness. There is certainly nothing wrong with being overimpulsive, but a discipline must also be established.

Art of any kind is extremely important as a way of paying off debts, that is psychological debts. When you were a woman, Mark, and wealthy, you gave away money. Now like Joseph and Ruburt, you give away parts of yourself, fragments of yourself, made more or less into living psychological forms that according to your ability are free from not only time, but free from many of the defects of your own present personality.

Any art form touches the generations. Karma can be worked out in many ways, and here again we return to Mark’s earlier male oriented, aggressive personality. This time, through the creation of beauty in paintings, he more than makes up for past errors; not only because paintings certainly should possess beauty, but because they instill positive creative thoughts in the mind of the beholder.

Mark’s present family is composed of a peculiarly vivid meshwork of previous complications. The involvement has been beneficial as far as Mark is concerned thus far. However the situation should now be altered.

I suggest that you take your break; and again, by all means, let me complicate matters further by commenting on the fact that Mark himself knew you, Joseph, twice before, and perhaps you will recall my comments upon your relationship with your son’s mistresses in Denmark.

There is quite a fleshy story here, in which Mark was rather directly connected. There are few of your friends and acquaintances in this life with whom you were connected to any strong degree in past lives. Some acquaintances were in your circle in various lives, and merely happened to be born in a like situation to your own because of problems that more or less corresponded to your own.

Mark, however, was closely connected to you both, as was Rendalin, R-e-n-d-a-l-i-n, who is now your Ed Robbins, not of this city. Take your break, by all means.

The impulsiveness on Mark’s part is in many ways an excellent and usable quality that can be built upon, but discipline of a mental and psychological nature must be used to give him direction, purpose, and a sense of continuity. In his case this is extremely important. He has not married, and as a merry bachelor many times myself, I applaud.

Nevertheless, I will take it upon myself to point out part of the reason, which does have its own hilarious aspects, looked at from perhaps a more distant perspective than that of which Mark is now capable.

For example, having as a mother a woman who has once been your wife is rather bewildering, and certainly can lead to all sorts of psychological uneasiness. Nevertheless my sense of humor to the contrary, Mark is coming along extremely well. The earlier errors are being somewhat over-compensated for, but he will be the gainer in this respect.

I have said much along these lines in previous sessions, and Mark should refer to them. He was a sailor on a ship that carried exotic spices. The ship was mine.

Nevertheless, in a barn one October evening, a sailor came drunkenly tip-toeing from the fields, Mark being our tipsy sailor. He expected to find his fair damsel there in your son’s arms, and he was quite prepared, having a knife in his belt. He heard the girl’s nervous titter—

You, Joseph, dropped your pretty parcel; this is for the record, so I shan’t note the position in which you had her so tenderly enfolded. There was no light in the barn. Our friend Mark let out a bellowing shriek. You thought the intruder was your son, since the girl was one of his mistresses. In a truly laughable attempt to elicit your son’s sympathy you literally wept in your beard.

Mark, when he realized who you were, damn near strangled you. But there is a postscript. You went back into the house, weeping at your old man’s fate. Mark grabbed the girl for one revengeful embrace. Ruburt came across the same fields with his horse, led the horse into the barn, and found Mark and his mistress.

You told me this story the next morning when both young men showed up with black eyes, and Mark with a broken wrist. But Mark, out of the goodness of his heart, never told your son who he found first in the barn, and of such small but tasty incidents is the history of the race composed.

And within the framework of the crucifixion there are inexhaustible truths still to be explored. Mark’s paintings of the crucifixion, like other such paintings, created a concept form, within which an unexpressable concept is transformed into expressible terms and placed within a spatial framework.

The painting is in a room with three windows, in a large building. It was not stolen but misplaced. The reasons are many. One of the main reasons is one that has to do with Mark’s own personality and psychological makeup.

Mark’s energy resources are scattered this evening. On another occasion, when he is in better control of them, doubtlessly we will be able to do better. His abilities are vibrant, but the discipline of which I spoke is needed to enable him to focus and concentrate his abilities along constructive and purposeful lines.

May 23rd will represent another, and perhaps the last crisis as far as Miss Callahan is concerned. I would advise Mark to go ahead with his plans to find an apartment, but to look over all aspects of any particular apartment that he has in mind, foreseeing difficulties of a temperamental rather than practical nature with the landlord. This would have nothing to do with practical arrangements, but would rather be a more or less mutual antagonism that would rise up between them in a little time.

Good night most fondly, and my regards to Mark. If he had brought more of himself with him tonight, then I could have been more help. I will speak to you Monday, if not before.