“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

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.

We may not be able to pin Seth — as that energy personality essence calls himself — down to one physical race, but he is a Sumari: “And a very high lieutenant indeed, I will have you know,” he told us with much humor in his first session on the Sumari family of consciousness, the 598th for November 24, 1971. A month later he offered more insights on his own reality — the kind of information we’re always interested in acquiring (as I wrote in Note 7 for the 733rd session). From Session 601 for December 22 of that year, then:

“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.

The categories [healing, teaching, or whatever] are general descriptions of the families of consciousness. [...] In the most mundane of terms, some families are travelers, and some prefer to stay at home. 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. [...]

Now these families fall generally into certain groups. 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. And (with broad amusement) most of you here are Sumari, and it demands great discipline for Sumari to take down lists — even of psychic families!

The Sumari experience began when one family, the Sumari, learned that some class members felt alone in this world — bereft of family, often. [...] And because of that emotional and quite human experience, Ruburt allowed the Sumari development to show itself….

(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. [...] The quotations also lead us back to the circumstances surrounding Seth’s delivery of his first session on the Sumari.)