“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The spirits of the two islands join for a journey to a third one, and there they discover a top-heavy land filled to the brim with strange birds and insects and animals that neither knew at home. The first island says to the third: “You are myself, only unbearably social. How can you stand to nurture so many different kinds of life?”

(Pause.) The third island, startled, replies: “I am myself, and you must be imperfect versions of my reality. I would no more be a dull island of only sand and palms, or a neurotic landscape of burning lava, any more than I would be a snail. My life is far the better, and you two are only poor shadowy counterparts of me.”

The third island says: “I am myself too busy for such nonsense. The many species that roam my domain demand my attention, and if you two want to exchange your realities that is fine — but leave me out of it, please.”

The spirit of Island One says: “I quite enjoyed my venture, and I’ve learned that the great explosive thrusts of creativity are good — but, oh, I yearn for my own quiet, undisturbed shores; and so if you don’t care I think I’ll return there.” And so it does — to find a land in some ways transformed. The sands still lie glittering, but the fog and mists are gone. The beloved birds have multiplied, and there is in the old familiar sameness a new, muted, but delightful refrain, colon: new species in keeping with the old, but more vigorous. The spirit of Island One realizes that it would find the old conditions quite boring now, and the new alterations fill it with pleasing excitement and challenge. What a delightful interchange. For the spirit is convinced that it definitely improved the condition of Island Two, and there is no doubt that the spirit of the second island improved Island One beyond degree.

(10:39.) In the meantime, Island Three’s spirit has been thinking. The spirits of island One and Two did not appeal to it (or to him or her in any of these cases, if you prefer) at all. It was determined to retain its own identity. Yet it too has become lonely, and it has seen endless coral paths reaching out from itself.

The two confront each other sideways, for neither can look in the other’s eyes. What opposites, what contrasts, what fascinations! So they strike a bargain. The spirit of the desert island says: “You are all wrong. I will go to your land and prove it, and you can stay here and partake of the joys of my peaceful existence — and, I hope, learn the value of austerity.”

So the volcano throws its energy into the formation of still more new species, while the desert spirit sings its calmness through their tissues. But this new life confounds it also, and it yearns to return home to its old quietude. There, the spirit of the third island has quickened the desert’s abilities so that it blooms with muted flowers not present before. The two spirits meet. Each island is changed. “We are counterparts, each of the other, yet inviolate.”

(11:04. “I knew we weren’t going to get a break until we finished that goddamn analogy,” Jane laughed after she’d come out of a good trance. “I do think we’re going to lose readers along the way, though — this book’s getting too hard to follow. I also think it’s going to be in two volumes. I haven’t had the guts to see how much material we’ve gotten so far.”

(Nor have I checked up on “Unknown” Reality’s bulk. This was the second time in three weeks that Jane had mentioned a two-volume work; see the opening notes for the 721st session. I wondered aloud whether she might be getting herself used to such an idea. I added that I didn’t think she need worry about readers following Seth’s material — that certainly many others are just as curious as we are about where “Unknown” Reality is going.

(An aside: Jane said that toward the end of her delivery she’d been bothered by traffic noise. It was a warm if snowy night, and we had a kitchen window open for fresh air; all through her delivery I’d been aware of the traffic ceaselessly negotiating the intersection just west of “our” apartment house, of course, and had asked her to repeat a number of words. We do intend to move out of our two apartments early next year, as soon as I finish the illustrations for Jane’s Dialogues — that is, we’re going to start looking for a house we can buy.

(3. The material on my parents reaches back to the first two sessions, 679–80, in [added later] Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality.

One strand of your mother’s consciousness — that one involved with you — is intertwined with your reality because of her interest in homes.⁵ Another strand of hers is involved because of her interest in families — and hence with the children of your two brothers, Linden and Richard.

7. And at various times through my early years, I understood how my mother used me (and my two brothers) as “weapons,” or tools or objects, against my father. “Weapons,” perhaps, is too strong a word, I think now, for I don’t remember my mother blatantly encouraging “her” children to defy their father. Yet we would often end up being on her side. As I grew up I came to feel that my father was both strongly surprised and disappointed by the wife and children he’d chosen to be involved with.