“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(And what about the very first counterpart references in our sessions? In Chapter 1 of The Seth Material Jane described how we began these sessions [on December 2, 1963] through our use of the Ouija board. During the first three sessions the material came from a Frank Withers — who, it developed in the 4th session, was one of the “personality fragments” making up the Seth entity, or whole self. Just before Seth announced his presence to us in that same session, Frank Withers spelled out a remark through the board that meant little to Jane and me at the time: “One whole entity may need several manifestations, even at simultaneous so-called times.”

(“Well,” I said to Jane after class, as we discussed the Chinese-American situation cited by Seth, “I don’t know about counterpart relationships in other kinds of realities, but it’s certainly obvious that at least some physical counterparts can hate each other …” So the larger self, I thought, would be quite capable of seeking experience through its parts in every way imaginable. Although it might be difficult for us to understand, let alone accept, the whole self or entity must regard all of its counterparts as sublime facets of itself — no matter whether they loved, suffered,⁵ hated, or killed each other or “outsiders.” Within its great reaches it would transform its counterparts’ actions in ways that were, quite possibly, beyond our emotional and intellectual grasp. At the same time, the self would learn and be changed through the challenges and struggles of its human portions.

(Seth himself first used “counterpart” in the 6th session for December 11, 1963. At the time — and for a long while afterward — his employment of the word meant little, if anything, to Jane and me. The newly begun sessions already contained a number of unfamiliar terms and ideas: In the 4th session three days earlier, for instance, Seth had just given us our entity names [Ruburt for Jane, Joseph for me], and touched upon the psychic links connecting the three of us. Any subtleties afforded by concepts like counterparts would have quite escaped us. For that matter, at the time we didn’t know whether or not the sessions would continue. Nor were we particularly concerned about the issue.

Part of same entity or counterpart.

The creativity of any given entity is endless, and yet all of the potentials for experience will be explored. [...]

[...] All of the potentials of the entity are also actualized.

(“Well,” I said after discussing the session with her, “it’s my understanding that our whole self or entity experiences a group of simultaneous physical lives in various historical periods, and that in ordinary terms we think of those lives as following one after another. [...]