“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.

The spirits of the two islands join for a journey to a third one, and there they discover a top-heavy land filled to the brim with strange birds and insects and animals that neither knew at home. The first island says to the third: “You are myself, only unbearably social. How can you stand to nurture so many different kinds of life?”

The spirit of the first island visits the second one, and finds itself amazed. It feels an ever-thrusting power, rushing up from beneath, that erupts in always-changing form. Yet it is always itself, comparing its experience to what it has known. When the volcano itself, ceaselessly erupting, wishes for peace, the spirit of the first island thinks of its own quiet home shores. The volcano learns a new lesson: It can direct its power in whatever way it chooses, shooting upward or lying quietly. It can indeed be dormant and dream for centuries. (Slowly now:) It can, if it chooses, allow soft sands to lie gracefully upon its cooling expanse.

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.

(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.

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.

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 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.

One strand of your mother’s consciousness — that one involved with you — is intertwined with your reality because of her interest in homes.⁵ Another strand of hers is involved because of her interest in families — and hence with the children of your two brothers, Linden and Richard.

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.

6. From her viewpoint my mother was, indeed, quite baffled when I turned away from a well-paying career in commercial art toward a very risky one in “fine art,” or painting. The year was 1953, and I’d just met Jane. My mother was 61 years old, I was 34, and Jane was 24. See the few additional details in Note 10 for the 679th session, in Volume 1.