“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Its spirit followed one such path and came upon a desert island upon which nothing grew. Figuratively, its image was appalled. “How can you stand such barrenness?” it calls to the spirit of this fourth island.

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.”

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.”

What peace! Yet in the peace, what power! And so little by little cacti grow where there were none, delicate buds opening, filled with water. The spirit of the third island immediately begins to transform the desert island. Great changes appear, and showers of power — quick bursts of rain, explosive inundations of energy.

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.”

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.”