“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Some wanted me to identity their counterparts for them. One student (Fred), a contractor, said little. Instead, during the last week he let his own creative imagination go wherever it might while he held the general idea in his mind. He played with the concept, then. In a way his experiences were like those of a child — open, curious, filled with enthusiasm. As a result he himself discovered a few of his counterparts.²

These counterparts form psychic families. They are family representations on another level. First of all, such groups have a built-in focus — political, civic, religious, sexual, or whatever. (Pause.) Certain members of the group express the repressed tendencies of others. Yet each is supported through a common sense of belonging, so that the group sometimes seems to have its own overall identity, in which each member plays a part. Any reader can easily discover this by examining the groups to which he or she belongs.

(Pause.) Earl (Williams) and Sam (Garret) are counterparts. To my readers these names mean nothing. Yet in each case the relationships noted indicate inner realizations and connections. The same realities appear in each of your lives. Will Petrosky and Ben (Fein) are counterparts. Will (who, incidentally, witnessed the 729th session) is a very intellectual young man — proud of it, though he goes to great effort to show he is one of the boys. On the other hand, Ben Fein trusts his intuitions fully, and relies upon them, yet to some extent fears his own great energy. In many respects he is a child, and utterly spontaneous.

Will dreams of being spontaneous. Yet even in this open [class] group, Ben’s spontaneity becomes embarrassing to adults free enough to play with the idea of spontaneity while not trusting it completely. Ben is afraid of the intellect. He is frightened that it will “pull him down.”

(I wondered if the attributes or vocations Seth had recited could be directly related to the families of consciousness he’d given just previously, and Jane said this was the case. Neither of us could tell what went with what, though; perhaps we’ll get information that will help us make some connections; perhaps I can present a list of such correlations in a note.

2. Fred received his information in the form of several most delightful, externalized visions. He saw two of his contemporary counterparts in them. Both were female. One was a peasant in Turkey; she was “either 62 or 63 years old.” The other was a very tall, handsome and intelligent black in her late 20’s, who was a “socialite” living in California.

4. See Seth’s very acute discussions of the soul (or entity) in sessions 526–28 for Chapter 6 of Seth Speaks. He came through with many excellent points. I’ve always been intrigued by the remark he made just before 10:43 in the 526th session: “You are one manifestation of your own soul.” Then in Chapter 9 of Personal Reality, see the 637th session at 10:20: “A group of cells forms an organ. A group of selves forms a soul. I am not telling you that you do not have a soul to call your own. You are a part of your soul. It belongs to you, and you to it.”

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.

“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….”

10. Jane initiated the Sumari development on her own, in the ESP class for November 23, 1971. The next night Seth began discussing that psychic event in the 598th session. During one delivery he remarked somewhat humorously that the Sumari “want someone else to take care of what they have created …”, that “they don’t hang around to cut the grass….” Jane quoted short passages from the session in Chapter 7 of Adventures in Consciousness.