“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

4. Strange, how things can develop or not in our camouflage reality. I’ll explain what I mean by referring to my two questions for Seth in reverse order. At the end of the 732nd session I expressed the hope that “… we’d soon begin to get the material we wanted …” from him on whether the counterpart and family-of-consciousness mechanisms applied to other species and forms than our own; hence my second question this evening. With Seth’s evident help, Jane herself began at least a partial answer — one that was cut off by our visitor, Barbara, pounding upon our door. Jane’s focus and concentration on the subject were broken, and we didn’t return to it at the time. Not only that: I must note that even several years later we’ve still acquired no Seth material at all on such possible counterpart and family-of-consciousness roles. I also let go (although not consciously and deliberately) my plans to keep after Seth for that kind of information.

(“I’m at the point now where I know what Seth’s going to talk about,” “Jane said a few minutes before the session began. “I feel funny waiting, though — edgy, or restless. Maybe it’s the wind. Seth’s there, but he doesn’t quite make it through….”

(1. Granting Seth’s concept of time: Does the reincarnating personality usually choose to experience its simultaneous lives through various families of consciousness, or is it more likely to remain “loyal” to one such family in all of them? At the start of tonight’s session Seth had remarked that generally speaking counterparts are part of the same psychic family, but I wanted to know if reincarnating personalities are also.

In a way, however, Seth may do Jane and me something of an injustice when he remarks, for instance, that the Sumari “don’t hang around to cut the grass….” (Again, see Note 10 for Session 732.) Jane and I may be involved with the arts, and impatient at times, but we’re also extremely tenacious when we decide to do something we consider worthwhile. I doubt that the Seth material would exist in its present recorded form if we weren’t that way.

(It happened that in ESP class last night Seth came through with material pertaining to the nine families of consciousness he’d begun discussing a week ago; see the 732nd session. These class excerpts, which I’ve rearranged somewhat for easy reference, may be used when considered with book material still to come, since Seth will occasionally use the class format to supplement his dictation in our “regular” sessions. The quotations also lead us back to the circumstances surrounding Seth’s delivery of his first session on the Sumari.)

(I shouldn’t have been surprised last evening to hear Seth say that such an impetus had triggered Jane’s Sumari abilities, for today, when I reread the 598th session for November 24, 1971, I was reminded that he’d said the same thing then. The death of the student’s father had taken place on Thursday, November 11 of that year; Jane’s father, Delmer, died without forewarning on the following Tuesday, November 16; Jane came through with Sumari in class one week later, on November 23; and the next night, in the 598th session, Seth discussed Sumari for the first time.

1. I can note a good deal later that Seth’s material on our making further distinctions in the families of consciousness, beyond the nine he’s already named for us, is certainly related to the passages from a private session that I quoted in the last three paragraphs of Note 8 for the 732nd session: Seth stated that Peter Smith and I “are and are not counterparts” — that with another in this life each of us may often come together, then part, “forming a counterpart relationship when it suits your purposes….”

Now (Seth told us last night) you can expand the functions of any particular family group, or you can cut it down, by deciding how precise you want to be. [...]