“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In another system of reality your father was — in fact, still is — a well-known inventor, who never married but used his mechanically creative abilities to the fullest while avoiding emotional commitment. He met Stella (my mother). They were going to be married — and in terms of years, the same years are involved, historically. At one time, then, in your father’s past as you think of it, having met Stella, he did not marry her after all. His love was for machinery, the speed of motorcycles, mixing creativity with metal. At that point of intersection, equal desires and intents within him became like twin nuclei. Whole regroupings of energy occurred, psychological and psychic implosions, so that two equally valid personalities were aware in a world in which only one could live at a time.

By far, the creative, mechanically inventive personality began to outstrip the other. The father that you knew was the probable self, therefore. That probable self, however, dealt with emotional realities that the other avoided, and this was indeed his sole intent.

(Pause at 10:07.) This does not mean that such a personality is limited, basically, or that he does not collect about him new interests and challenges, for he is himself mobile. He even has many of the characteristics of the other self, though these of course are latent. But through having children your father brought about the birth of emotional existence, fullbodied and alive, in sons.³

This was a great fulfillment on his part, for the inventor did not trust himself to feel much emotion, much less give birth to emotional beings. In that other probability in which your parents originally met, your mother married a doctor, became a nurse, and helped her husband in his practice. She became an independent woman, and — again in your historical context — when it took some doing for a woman to distinguish herself.

(Pause.) You think of entities as particles, for example, rather than as waves of energy, aware and alert, or as patterns. (A one mimute pause.) Think of Ruburt’s living area in Adventures⁵ for example. Imagine that at age 13, three strong energy centers come to the surface of the personality — highly charged, so that one person cannot adequately fulfill the desires or abilities presented. You may have a three-way split at age 13. At [age] 40, each of the three selves may recognize age 13 as a turning point, and wonder what might have happened had they chosen other courses.

(To me again:) Your birth (in 1919) coincided with the birth of your mother’s child in that other reality, hence her stronger feelings toward you. Your birth, and that of your youngest brother (Richard) were highly charged for her — yours for the reasons just given, and your brother’s because it represented the time of your mother’s hysterectomy in that other reality. In this reality, Richard’s birth represented your father’s final attempt to deal with emotional reality. Both of your parents imbued the third son with the strongest emotional qualities of their natures. Your mother had him defiantly, after the usual childbirth age (she was 36) almost reacting against that [probable] hysterectomy. In this world, she could and would have another child.

2. I think that as a child I often sensed my parents’ feelings of strangeness about this reality, although I was quite unable to express myself in those terms. Perhaps I’m reinterpreting old memories in the light of Seth’s material here. Consciously, however, I knew nothing then about probable realities or the power of belief; I was just acutely aware of the unending differences of opinion between my mother and father, and of my unformed questions about the reasons for their behavior; at the same time I saw them struggling to live like others I knew. I don’t think I even discussed my confused feelings with my brothers as we grew older. On several occasions Seth has given very blunt, very perceptive interpretations of the churning relationship involving my parents. That material is too long and complex to excerpt here, but I’d like to treat it separately sometime.

3. While dealing with emotional realities in this life, my father also exercised very considerable mechanical abilities. According to Seth’s ideas, these would have represented bleed-throughs from his “inventor” probable reality.

From the 15th session for January 13: “Imagination allows you to enter into these planes … Pretend that you not only understand your cat’s concept of time to some degree, but could also experience his sense of time through the cat [Willy] himself. In doing this you would in no way bother, inhibit, or annoy the cat. He would not be aware of your presence. Nor could this be represented as any sort of invasion.

“Imagine further that you actually experienced the feeling of such a furry coat, and all the other feline equipment from the inside, purely as a spectator. This would loosely represent an analogy to my traveling to other planes. It follows that I could not travel to ‘higher’ environments than my own, where more acute senses would instantly perceive me … On many planes, we are fully visible to others on that plane. To some we are invisible; and to us, some are invisible.