“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“An idea came to me a few days ago, when I was thinking about my fascination with the time of Henry VIII (in 16th-century England). I wondered, ‘Whatever happened to Henry?’ Suddenly I had the thought that maybe in linear terms Henry is now ‘many’ people — that he has a number of offshoots or counterpart personalities alive at once. So, theoretically, you could get all the Henry people together now, have them alter their consciousnesses to a certain degree, and compile from them an amazing multilevel, multifaceted portrait of Henry VIII — assuming, of course, that one would be willing to accept such subjective experiences as valid. What a wonderful, weird view of ‘history’ — and probably a truer one than we’re used to….”

Good evening. Now: I have spoken about counterparts in Ruburt’s class.¹ Many of the students became deadly serious as they tried to understand the concept.

Certain members of a family often act out particular roles, however, for the family as a whole. One might be the upstart, another the perfect achiever. Psychologists now often try to deal with the family as a whole, by allowing the different members to see how they may be exaggerating certain tendencies at the expense of others.

The upstart, for instance, may be displaying all of the bold aspects inhibited by other family members. Through this person the others may vicariously share the excitement or suspense of those experiences that are otherwise blocked. On the other hand the achiever may be completely hiding such impulses, while expressing faithfully the desires of other family members for “excellence” and discipline. Now the same can apply to counterparts, and those in your experience can show to you, in exaggerated form, comma, abilities of your own upon which you have not chosen to concentrate. You can learn much from your counterparts, therefore, and they from you. Those counterparts that you meet will be working, playing, and being more or less within your own culture. This does not mean that you are bits and pieces of some hypothetical whole self.

(Student Bill Herriman is a professional pilot who flies a considerable distance to Elmira for class; his counterpart in class, Carl Jones, lives in Elmira each summer while giving instructions in sailplane flying, the third member of the counterpart trio, Bill Granger, is not a member of class, lives in Elmira, has always had a deep interest in aircraft, and is now learning to pilot sailplanes. [...]