“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Most of the people who come to Ruburt’s classes are Sumari,⁷ for example. There are eight other such psychic families — nine in all. Some of Ruburt’s students are counterparts of each other. Many of the people who come here come home in the ways that [members of a physical] family attend a reunion.

Sue Watkins, who had introduced Peter to Jane and me in 1973, was involved in the question through her friendship with all of us. It was Sue who verified that several months ago Peter had described to her what he now felt to be the same psychic event I’d tuned in to just a few weeks ago (on December 3, 1974) — only Peter’s experience had taken place in 1967! I called my version of it my “fourth Roman,” and presented an account of it in Appendix 22; through internal pictures I saw, in Jerusalem in the first century A.D., the violent death of my traitorous Roman-soldier counterpart.

People have written here asking about soul mates.³ In certain circles this is the latest vogue. The idea is an old one; it is based upon the reality of counterparts, and presents another version of the theory. But, again, it is treated with an almost pompous seriousness. (Pause.) Many of those who use the term do it to hide rather than to release their own joyful abilities. They spend time searching for their soul mates — but the search involves them in a pilgrimage for a kind of impossible communication with another, in which all division is lost, with the two then trying to join in a cementing oneness, suffocating all sense of play or creativity. You are not one part, or one half, of another soul,⁴ searching through the annals of time for your partner, undone until you are completed by your soul mate.

(Pause.) You are involved with some of your counterparts more or less directly, while others live in different lands, and are sometimes separated also in terms of age differences or culture — qualities with which you would find it difficult to relate.⁵ Intuitively, you know who the counterparts are in your daily experience. This does not mean that if you become consciously aware of such affiliations you must then feel it your responsibility to form a kind of culture of counterparts, or to try and affect other people’s lives by reminding them of your relationship. You are each individual. Some of the people you dislike most heartily may be counterparts.⁶ Each of you may be exploring different aspects of the same overall challenge.

[...] Jane and I saw Norma socially one evening, along with a few other students as well as some people who were not class members. [...] Still, it’s worth noting that being in the presence of a relative stranger who may also be one’s counterpart does make some sort of interior difference in response or attention. I wondered about the countless times counterparts had unwittingly gathered on similar occasions, and what sort of numberless exchanges had taken place on unconscious levels between those who were psychically related in some fashion.

(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. [...]