“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

New paragraph: Even in your private lives, however, there are clues as to other kinds of sequences in which events can occur — and do. You are usually unaware of the significance of such hints. They pass beneath your notice simply because they do not fit the ordered sequence with which you are familiar. In your idea of reality such clues appear insignificant. They make no sense, particularly in the ordered scheme of reality generally recognized.

New paragraph. Driving through Sayre,¹ Pennsylvania, one Sunday afternoon, Joseph noticed a house for sale in a neighborhood he knew — and remembered that it had belonged, in his memory, to a man of whom his mother had been fond. On impulse, Joseph had Ruburt call the real estate firm whose sign was on the house. The house was still owned by the man in question. Joseph only remembered his mother speaking of this gentleman in the past. In the recognized reality shared by the Butts family there had been no intimate contact between Joseph’s mother and Mr. Markle (as I’ll call him). Joseph’s mother had been greatly struck by the man, however, and was convinced that she could have married him instead of the husband she had chosen. Through the years she fantasized such a situation. Mr. Markle was, and is, wealthy. Now of course he is an old man, unable to tend to his home any longer. He is now in a home for the aged, but well cared for.

(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.

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.”

1. Jane and I took our drive three weeks ago, on April 7. The town of Sayre is only 18 miles from Elmira, N.Y., where we live now, and it sits in the beautiful Pennsylvania hills between two smaller communities — Athens to the south, and Waverly to the north in New York State. Locally the three are known as “The Valley.” We visit Sayre occasionally. Although it’s close by as far as miles go, for me important aspects of it are far away in terms of years.

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.