“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

All societies are different. The tenants at 458 at one time formed a kind of family, and to some extent that relationship continues, as far as the two of you are concerned, with Ann and Leonard. You remember past tenants together as people recall distant or dead family members. And in particular you chose the conditions of the flood and took part in a joint history.

I will at some time go into the reasons why all of you chose that house and the flood situation, for it fit into your joint and private purposes. The Walls were also involved. They served as house parents to some degree.

(On file: see “A Life in the Talmud,” New York Times Magazine for September 11, 1977, on oral history of Jews as well as the Talmud itself.)

You were Ruburt’s younger brother at that time, and both of you engaged in many bloody religious battles. You were blunt men, yet highly emotional, living for some time near Constantinople, but ranging far, even to Afghanistan, and on several occasions meeting bands from Rome.

He accepted you as a mate and teacher, however, and put such weight upon your words because in that old context you were a male. You both decided to use power indirectly, however, to affect your civilization through thought rather than through combat. In early years Ruburt found it difficult even to contradict you, even while he insisted upon his own independence of mind, and upon his use of his abilities. At times, however, you refused to lead in this life when circumstances might have warranted a more active role at particular times, because in that previous life you would not buck Ruburt, and because you also were more cautious this time about the use of personal power.

This time those followers are provided with information you did not have then, and they are taught to be true to themselves. They are told not to be cruel or fanatical, not to die for the sword, or by the sword. Yet they look to you. Ruburt became overly cautious, however, and your own attitudes helped. To some extent you felt, both of you, that a woman, gifted, needed greater protection. She was not as dependable, nor should she really show her face in public—so to some extent, now, the symptoms took the place of the veil.

You simply decided to know what you were doing this time, and an over-conscientiousness on both of your parts led you to rein in your joint spontaneity.

This time you have maintained your health equilibrium, and you have not become negative. Ruburt’s improvement has been steady, but guarded, as he watches for your attitude, and to make sure that it is indeed safe now.

In that life you did not understand, however, the true independence of men’s minds. You went overboard, trying to influence their minds, and not influencing their minds at the same time in this life, lest they follow you blindly.

Your curiosity did not involve philosophies, but had to do with the physical world, and particularly with its water passageways—an interest that did indeed find you and the Caribbean, later, in either the 14th or 15th century, directly involved with piracy—and I believe with some controversy involving the French government at the time.

In connection with the Turkish life, you decided upon certain handicaps this time. You were the adored sons of a Turkish chieftain, following the social patterns of your times, gifted at birth with power and position.

You were the elder this time, where before you were the younger. Ruburt looked up to you in those days as once you looked up to him. There is no need for a handicap of any kind. You both also had from other existences strong drives toward privacy and secrecy. The television program you saw about monasteries and privacy to some extent applies here, for in the hurly-burly of medieval life there was no privacy for thought.

Only monks could afford it, and there were thousands of different groups scattered throughout Europe. There were equally as many long-forgotten communities, in which hermits of every sect imaginable squatted in caves in given areas. People of solitary nature born in medieval times had to make their own structures, and if they were not hermits or monks, they were outlaws of one kind or another, frequenting the woods, which were often full of semi-permanent but isolated communities—men and women who preyed upon travelers, for example.

He is obviously more restricted in that regard, but neither have you had a woman you had to escort, so your times were spent thinking, writing, exploring the nature of reality, and affecting society while not being infected by it, according to your concepts and beliefs. More than this, people come to you, as befits your Turkish condition. You do not go to them. Nor do you set up a school for fools—again, according to your beliefs and concepts.