“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

As you wonder, more astonished still, you discover other coral paths extending from you in all directions. These lead to further islands. “They are all me,” you think, though each is very different. One may have no trees at all, and another be the home of a volcano. Some may be filled with soft grasses, innocent of sand.

(Pause at 10:09.) The first island responds, in our hypothetical dialogue: “I suspect (suddenly louder) that each of us is quite correct. And more, I wonder if we are really islands at all.”

(Heartily:) What a transformation! Its volcano, it finds, now gives birth to soil and pollen, its excitement roused in a million different ways. It meets the spirit of the first island that has been living there, and says: “What a change! I would like a still more spectacular display. The flowers are not nearly colorful or wild enough. It is, if you will forgive me, too well-tamed — yet all in all you’ve done wonders. Now, however, I’d like a cultural interchange with others still unknown; and if you don’t mind I wish you’d go home. (Whispering:) This is, after all, me, and my land.”

(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 spirit of Island Four journeys to that other reality, where all kinds of life swarm over shore and mountain, and the spirit of the third island visits a world of such peace that all motion seems stilled.

In the meantime, the spirit of the desert island is almost overwhelmed by the teeming life forms on Island Three, so next it visits the volcanic one; and when the volcano becomes frightened of its own energy the spirit of the desert island says: “Peace. It is all right to sleep, all right to dream. You do not need to be so worried for your energy. It can flow swiftly, or slowly, in surges of dreams that take ages. Do as you will.”

(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.

This is not dictation. But in the terms of our analogy, some island spirits are gamblers. So you and Ruburt are gamblers. You gambled above all that your instincts would lead you in the proper direction, and that you would “win out” despite the “odds” as you understood them.²

Consciousness is not limited. Identities can mix and merge while retaining their inviolate nature and memories. This is all for now, but again, later, you will see where it relates, and how you can disperse your own characteristics into another and they can disperse theirs into you, with your consent and theirs, to form new aspects of reality and to cast new light on combined purposes and challenges.

4. Earlier in this decade of our camouflage reality, all four of our parents died within a period of less than three years. In Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality, see Note 2 for Session 680, and the notes at the beginning of the 696th session.