“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Those seeds form the physical races, which are all variations on a theme, or as Ruburt would say, eccentricities² of an everchanging model. You accept the fact that there are biological connections in terms of family, country, and race, between yourselves and the other individuals on your planet. The species divides itself up, so to speak, and the members of the different races at any given time distribute themselves in the various lands and continents. You are used to making organizations. You say: “This race is thus and so, and we can trace its history through the ages.”* Or: “That race initiated language.” Generally speaking, you see certain races as having their own characteristics. When you do this you often ignore other contradictory tendencies that are not as apparent. No one, however, feels less a person because of not being in a race by himself or herself.

Psychically, you are made up of counterparts, as physically you come from various races. There are far more counterpart groupings than there are races, but then your definition of races is arbitrary. Period. Counterparts can be better related to physical families, for you might well have four or five counterparts alive in one century, as you might have four or five family members spanning the same amount of time. Basically, however, counterparts deal with fulfillments and developments that transcend races or countries.

Give us a moment … Certain abilities can be developed with much greater ease in particular time periods — in a highly industrialized technology, for example — and those interested in that kind of an environment did not generally appear in the eras of the cavemen, simply because those alive at that time were working with different challenges. So this hypothetical greater identity also chooses to be born in different time periods, historically speaking; and the same pattern appears in which counterparts are born as individuals, each biologically and spiritually connected, but with great intertwinings and variations, as with a physical family tree.

In its way, then, each century has its own integrity at all levels. The identity of each living person is always “brand new.” Yet its rich psychic heritage connects it through memory and experience to those who will “come after,” or those who have “gone before.” You are closer to some family members than others, and you are closer to some counterparts than others.