“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.”

(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 spirit of the desert island replies: “I am myself. You must be some counterpart, drunken with sensation, not realizing the purity of my own stripped-down nothingness.”

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.”

This is the end of our analogy. The spirit of each of the four islands was itself intact, and the interchanges were chosen. You are not islands unto yourselves, except when you choose to be. Each counterpart views reality from its own viewpoint, and there is never any invasion.

(4. The counterpart references are a good example of how Seth weaves such concepts into a discussion.

You are willing counterparts (see the 721st session) of each other, and have been in your terms before — each playing out “opposite” aspects of each other, yet merging for common purposes and goals.

(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.

Now in a way your mother and Ruburt were counterparts; for Ruburt lives in a trust of individual abilities toward which your mother yearned; and Ruburt gives a love to you which your mother yearned to give — yet while retaining her identity — to a man. Your mother understood love’s purpose and felt its presence in Ruburt. And at the same time she was actually annoyed when she felt that you were not following your [commercial] artistic ability through, despite her surface misunderstandings of it.⁶