“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The psychic groups, however, overlap physical and national ones. The Sumari are extremely independent, for instance, and as a rule you will not find them born into countries with dictatorships. When they do so appear, their work may set a spark that brings about changes, but they seldom take joint political action. Their creativity is very threatening to such a society.

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

Sumari is a state of mind, a slant of being. They are not fighters, nor will they generally advocate a violent overthrow of government or mores. They believe in the creativity of change, naturally occurring.

2. Jane and I are Sumari (see notes 7 and 10 for Session 732). I can write that many of the characteristics Seth mentioned this evening apply to us, as we’ve learned over the years — especially those concerning our love of art, our being initiators, and our desires to be free of social structures. At the same time we readily agree that organizations are indispensable within the world’s very complicated cultures. We do have strong interests in national and world politics. Yet if our work is to ever result in social changes of any kind, those changes will have to be carried through by others, for primarily Jane and I work alone.

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.

If we’d encouraged him to begin answering question No. 2, then, Jane and I assume that as time passed much of his succeeding work would have been changed and enlarged in scope to some observable degree. Seth could have based future sessions upon the additional conscious knowledge already given us; we’d have possessed the larger frame of reference necessary to accommodate even more new material.