“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.

Its neighbor responds: “I know. You are me without my towering volcano, ignorant of the thundering magic of flowing lava, calm and rather stupid (emphatically), if the truth be known.”

(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.”

(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.”

That island spirit responds: “Even the vigor of your questions sickens me. I sense that you come from a land so overcrowded and tumultuous that it makes my sands blanch even further, and the knuckles of my rocks turn white.”

(5. I think the application of tonight’s material to Jane and me is neatly summarized in the last paragraph of the session.

(6. At the same time, that paragraph contains very challenging ideas; they strongly remind me of the “Miriam” material I obtained about my father last week. See the last session, with its Note 4.

(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.

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.