“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In many ways history is your built-in past, the obvious events that are significant. All of the different variations that can be played upon human consciousness, all of the racial probabilities, are in one way occurring in ages past — but they are also happening in what you think of as your present. As mentioned earlier (in sessions 680–82), your consciousness seizes upon certain events over others and brings these into significance, and therefore into the official reality that you know.

(10:12.) Instead you have a rich interweaving of probabilities; for in one probability the two were indeed married, and that Stella [Butts] saw the house go to the eldest son (myself). In this probability, this Joseph instead comes upon the house of a relative stranger, finds it for sale, and can or cannot purchase it according to the new set of probabilities then emerging. There is a cross-blending of “effects.” In this probability Joseph’s mother left little in financial terms, relatively speaking, and her house was sold. The family did not get it.

(Humorously:) Now, all probabilities are related. Joseph’s mother is dead, in your terms, and aware to some extent of the nature of her own reality beyond the physical. She is able, again to some extent, to follow through with her own probable existences. That is, she is conscious of her own being outside of the official framework.⁴

Her own psychology and characteristic methods of behavior are still hers, however, and operate, so that “she” “tunes into” those areas of probabilities that concern her own desires and interests. In this system she wanted Joseph to have her own house (see Note 1), but for many reasons that did not develop.

She often dreamed of living in it. On a mental level and an emotional one, she used that probability in this life to enrich her own hours through daydreaming — but without, of course, any realization that those daydreams had their own reality.

New paragraph: This is, however, a clear case of the interweaving of probabilities. In this one Joseph can choose whether to buy or not, so there is no coercion (by Stella Butts), for example. Joseph and Ruburt were also shown a second house in Sayre — one a good deal cheaper, but generally much like the one in which Joseph’s mother lived in this life. They saw both houses on the same day. The second, like the first, was for sale because of age. An elderly couple recently moved from the second house to a home for the aged. Again, the “official” mind says, “Coincidence. All of this is quite natural: Many homes are for sale because the elderly can care for them no longer.”

The real estate couple (the Johnsons) were also connected. Again, the official mind says that it was a coincidence that this couple were, in their way, artistically inclined, enjoyed painting and writing, free-lanced, and still lived in an apartment after some years of marriage — and that the man was relatively quiet in contrast to the woman (with amusement). Yet again probabilities merge, for the woman could well have been a writer, the man an artist; and seeing Ruburt and Joseph, they related with other probabilities inherent in their own natures.

The intent [that] Joseph’s mother had lives beyond the grave, in those terms. She still wants Joseph to have a house, and one that will be more fashionable and wealthy than her own. Now Mr. Markle, a wealthy businessman, also had strong artistic abilities. He was a dealer in precious stones and fine antiques. These qualities attracted Joseph’s mother, Stella, and with the situation as she set it up in that life she was impressed, knowing that the man’s talents would bring him wealth. His artistic leanings caused him to choose real estate people who had latent artistic abilities of their own.

This psychic startled the couple by correctly identifying some specific elements of their experiences, so there was some kind of psychic connection also. Again, of course, coincidence. So says the officially organized mind. The rich interweavings of probabilities are apparent in all of your lives if only you stop organizing your perceptions and experience in prepackaged ways (emphatically).

The many directions possible for the species exist now. Joseph reacted on a cellular level in one respect. The cells recognized the probable reality involved,⁶ and he, Joseph, felt that he was “at home” (in the Markle place), and yet consciously could not explain the feeling. In certain terms his mother will feel vindicated if Joseph buys that house, but the choice is still his and Ruburt’s. If you pay more attention to what you think of as coincidences, you will discover another kind of order that underlies the recognized order you follow. This has all kinds of implications biologically as far as the species is concerned; you can perhaps understand, then, that there are also probable histories beneath your lives, individually and en masse.

(We haven’t talked a great deal about the probable ramifications inherent in the whole house episode — rather, we expected such concepts to operate if the Seth material has any validity. Our ways of thinking have changed considerably since these sessions began over a decade ago. Every so often Jane and I remind ourselves of just how much of a change there has been for each of us; this helps us relate our individual worlds to those of others. Neither of us believes in chance or coincidence in usual terms, for instance — nor have we since Seth began discussing the elements behind such qualities some years ago. We always assign reasons, even if they’re hidden at times, for any action. [And often, we’ve discovered, further observation will bear out those reasons.] This way of thinking led to our taking the chain of circumstances involving the two houses almost for granted; each unfolding had seemed to fall so effortlessly into place that deep questioning hadn’t been called for “Oh, of course — things would work out that way …”

In certain terms it is the connection, the symbol, between the two probability systems, for Mr. Markle’s house also has a shared drive. Ruburt and Joseph live in double apartments, in a large old mansion redone into such quarters. The driveway is shared with a very wealthy family next door, in which the same size house is a home to one family. Joseph’s mother wanted Joseph to be very wealthy. The drive symbolically connects the two realities, and is a point where the two merge.

It’s an old, predominantly lower-middle-class railroad town that used to derive much of its importance from being a junction point for several major lines; yet it’s also the site of a well-known hospital and clinic that has continued to grow. Sayre’s population was probably less than 6,500 when my two brothers and I were growing up there, and it isn’t much more today. My family lived in the neighborhood Seth describes from 1922 (when I was 3 years old) to 1931 (when I was 12), then moved to the opposite end of town. I remember quite well that I was most reluctant to move; the young boy didn’t want to leave his friends and the surroundings he loved. My parents’ motives for moving were meaningless to me at the time. They bought the “new” house, however, and it remained in the family until 1972 — a year after my father’s death, a year before my mother was to die.

4. In his Preface, Seth discusses the relationship between my mother’s death and his beginning “Unknown” Reality; in sessions 679–80, some of my mother’s probable lives; and in Session 683, my contacts with her in the dream state. See the appropriate notes for each session.