“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In his particular village, the elders believe that there is some merit to being underweight. Our young man hates the Americans. He believes that this is an opulent, luxurious, and wicked society, and yet he yearns toward it with all his heart.

(“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.

(On more “practical” levels, we thought that behavior among nations might be changed for the better if the idea of counterparts were understood, or at least considered — if, for instance, many of the individuals making up a country realized that they could actually be acting against portions of themselves [or of their whole selves] in the persons of the “enemy” country, and so modified the virulence of their feelings. The nations of the world would benefit greatly from even a small improvement in their relationships with each other. And if an individual strongly disliked a counterpart in another land, wouldn’t this quality of emotion be detrimentally reflected in the person doing the hating?

(The entire poem, Dear Love, which Jane wrote for me in December 1973, can be found in Note 3 for the 713th session. I want to repeat the first verse of it for obvious reasons, although all of the poem is an excellent creative exposition of counterpart ideas:

Dear love,