“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

However, the Sumari are practical in that they bring creative visions into physical reality, and try to live their lives accordingly. They are initiators, yet they make little attempt to preserve organizations, even ones they feel to be fairly beneficial. They are not lawbreakers by design or intent. They are not reformers in the strictest sense, yet their playful work does often end up reforming a society or culture. They are given to art, but in its broadest sense also, trying to make an “art” of living, for example. They have been a part of most civilizations, though they appeared in the Middle Ages (A.D. 476–c. A.D. 1450) least of all. They often come to full strength before great social changes. Others might build social structures from their work, for example, but the Sumari themselves, while pleased, will usually not be able to feel any intuitive sense of belonging with any structured group.²

There is no correlation between the families of consciousness and bodily characteristics, however. Many of the Sumari choose to be born in the springtime,³ but all those born in the spring are not Sumari, and no general rule applies there. They also have a liking for certain races, but again no specific rules apply. Many of the Irish, the Jews, the Spanish, and some lesser numbers of the French, for instance, are Sumari — though they appear in all races.

These figures can hardly be definitive in any sense, however; they’re meant only to point out some interesting directions for study, involving groups and the various families of consciousness to which their members may belong. I’ll simply note, then, that 24 of the 37 students in Jane’s class were born in the first half of the year. From that point on, the figures can be assembled and interpreted in different ways. Obviously they’d change within limits from class to class, depending not only on which members were in attendance, but on which ones are Sumari. Seth hasn’t pointed out every Sumari in class; some have strong feelings about belonging to that family of consciousness, but others don’t.

“Your [Sumari] consciousness is that kind of consciousness, and so is mine, except that my boundaries are far less limited than your own, and I recognize them not as boundaries but as directions in which recognition of myself must grow. The same applies to the Sumari as such. In other words, this is not an undifferentiated consciousness that addresses you now, but one that understands the nature of its own identity.

[...] But generally speaking, I have simply given you an outline which follows the characteristics of consciousness as it is embarked in physical form. I am not giving you these groups to set up divisions, but to help you understand that consciousness is diversified — that usually each of you falls, because you want to, into a certain family. [...]

[...] In greater terms you can “cut the pie” however you want to, but you will still share an emotional and psychic feeling of belonging with the family of which you are a part. [...]

[...] After Jane and I married a few years later we occasionally visited her father in various parts of the country — but still, we hadn’t seen him for several years before his death. [...]