“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now: a footnote to our [private] session of last night. Ruburt was correct: Lives are simultaneous. You can live more than one life at a time — in your terms now — but that is a loaded sentence. You are neurologically tuned in to one particular field of actuality that you recognize.² In your terms and from your viewpoint only, messages from other existences live within you as ghost images within the cells, for the cells recognize more than you do on a conscious level. That is, for a brief time, Joseph (Rob) was consciously able to perceive a portion of another existence.

(The material in these recent excerpts rather prepared us for Seth’s introduction of counterparts, then, in Session 721. In ESP class the next evening [on November 26], Seth began contending with some of the questions that instantly arose as a result of his new material. I’d just read aloud portions of the 721st session when one longtime student, whom I’ll call Florence, commented that there “has to be a balance between each of us and our counterparts.” Speaking strongly and humorously, Seth immediately took over the discussion.

(“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?

(Pause at 11:13.) If you are glutted — sated — with a steak dinner, for example, in America or Europe, then you are also famished in another portion of the world, experiencing life from an entirely different viewpoint. [...]

And added later: Jane presented my account of the Maumee episode, as well as portions of the 721st session itself, in Chapter 12 of Politics.