“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(“I’m beginning to get a cluster of images. They’re of islands,” Jane said at 9:40. “I don’t know why, but I’ve been doing things that way lately. Then Seth uses what I get in the material … Okay: I guess I’m about ready.” She lit a cigarette.)

Now this first island is very clever indeed, and so it sends its spirit wandering to the closest counterpart, and says: “You are myself, but without sand or palm trees.”

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.”

One day a bird flies out further from that first island than ever before, to another one, and comes back with a strange seed that falls from its beak. The seed grows. From it springs a completely new and unknown species of plant, as far as the island is concerned; and the plant in turn brings forth flowers with pollen, fruits, and scents (spelled) that have a different kind of creativity that is still its own. The spirit of the second island, then, brings forth elements in the first island that were not active earlier, but it becomes homesick, and so it finally returns to its own land.

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.

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.”

(1. It not only incorporates Seth’s “island” analogy, but Jane’s and his information in the last [725th] session on strands of consciousness.

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

So in one century you were Nebene, and Ruburt was indeed the “prostitute” priestess,³ and so did you challenge each other, as in different ways you do now, with tendencies that appear to be opposites, but are instead different ways of approaching the same kind of challenge. If you could understand, it would help in many areas you do not as yet suspect.

(To me:) You viewed aspects — counterparts — of your father’s reality. That reality invades no other. As in the analogy given this evening, the spirit of no island invaded any other, but looked momentarily and with permission through another’s picture of reality.

Your mother and father are alive, as are Ruburt’s parents,⁴ but their realities are not pinpointed to any given island, and they are forming alliances, but always from the standpoints of their own unique identities. Your own private identities do not need fences. They are themselves. They can combine and unite with others, yet retain their uniqueness and experience. Only your concepts limit your understanding of that prime freedom.

She identified with you to some extent, and to some unrecognized degree was “only masculine, now,” in her understanding of power. I hope you will recognize what I mean: but in the light of her understanding at the time, children were to be used as power, as a man might use weapons.⁷

Stella Butts changed and grew. But in certain terms she was the masculine center of the family, emotions or not, the aggressive one; and speaking conventionally now, your father (Robert Sr.) accepted the more passive creative role. This has meaning in terms of your [unpublished] information⁸ involving the masculine and feminine aspects that united and separated your parents. Your father would have been more “comfortable” as a woman, and she as a male. Yet for their own purposes they each chose to experience the other side of the coin, so to speak.

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.