“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Now these notes hark back to the end of the 732nd session, when I wrote a paragraph concerning Sue Watkins, our longtime friend who attends class as often as she can these days from the small town where she now lives, some 35 miles north of Elmira. Jane listed Seth’s families of consciousness last month in Session 732, but wound up the evening’s work thinking that several years ago, soon after she’d initiated the Sumari breakthrough, Sue had psychically tuned in on the name of a second family of consciousness — one that Seth didn’t give in the 732nd session. Jane thought the family name was similar to the “Gramada” that Seth had described; at session’s end I wrote that I intended to check our records for the missing name, and to ask Seth about it — but I neglected to do either of those things. One of the reasons for my failure to settle the matter right away was the lack of any immediate pressure to do so, for we hadn’t seen Sue since before the 729th session was held; that’s over five weeks ago now; newspaper work has often kept her too busy to make the trip to Elmira.

(Sue did attend class last Tuesday evening, however, arriving just in time before it began to read the transcript for the 732nd session. Then during class she handed me a note that I’ll paraphrase a bit here: “In a session on Sumari I witnessed in 1971 or early 1972 — I picked up a family-of-consciousness name, and Seth said it was ‘Grunaargh.’ It wasn’t on the list given last month.”

(Class was a very busy one, with over 40 people present. When Seth came through Sue had time for but one question: Was Grunaargh connected to any of the families of consciousness Seth had named in the 732nd session? “It is indeed,” Seth answered “It is related to one already given.”

(Sue’s note intrigued me anew: After class I promised her that not only would I search our files about Grunaargh, but that with Seth’s help Jane and I would eventually get more information on that family, and present it somewhere in the notes for “Unknown” Reality. The point I want to make here is that others beside Jane can intuitively divine material on the families of consciousness. Actually, for whatever reasons, Sue had glimpsed a family other than Sumari before Jane had. Going through back sessions late this evening, I found what I wanted. Sue had picked up on the Grunaargh¹ during the 598th session, which she’d recorded for me the evening after Jane had made the whole Sumari breakthrough in class, on November 23, 1971.

(Before tonight’s session Jane told me that she felt the Grunaargh represented a variation of Seth’s Gramada family of consciousness. “But the important things are the family characteristics,” she said, “by whatever name. The similarities in the two names are legitimate, I think. There are also family combinations, and these will have their own names.” Then she reminded me that several times during the past week she’d felt that Borledim, the next family of consciousness on Seth’s list, is strongly concerned with parenthood and related roles.)

The next family (Borledim) deals primarily with parenthood. These people are natural “earth parents.” That is, they have the capacity to produce children who from a certain standpoint possess certain excellent characteristics. The children have brilliant minds, healthy bodies, and strong clear emotions.

The personalities possess a keen resiliency of both body and mind, and serve as a strong earth stock. It goes without saying that members of one family often marry into other families. Of course the same thing happens here. When this occurs new stability is inserted, for this particular family acts as a source-stock, providing physical and mental strength. Period. Physically speaking, these people often have many children, and usually the offspring do well in whatever area of life is chosen. (Pause.) Biologically speaking, they possess certain qualities that nullify “negative” codes in the genes.² They are usually very healthy people, and marriage into this group can automatically end generations of so-called inherited weaknesses.³

These people (the Borledim) believe, then, in the natural goodness of sex, the body, and the family unit — however those attributes are understood in the physical society to which they belong. As a rule they possess an enchanting spontaneity, however, and all of their creative abilities go into the family group and the production of children. These are not rigid parents, though, blindly following conventions, but people who see family life as a fine living creative art, and children as masterpieces in flesh and blood. Far from devouring their offspring by an excess of overprotective care, they joyfully send their children out into the world, knowing that in their terms the masterpieces must complete themselves, and that they have helped with the underpainting.

[The Borledim] are the stock that so far has always seen to it that your species continues despite catastrophes, and they are more or less equally distributed about the planet and in all nationalities. They are most like the Sumari. They have the same love of the arts, the same general attitudes. They will usually seek fairly stable political situations in which to bear their children, as the Sumari will to produce their art. They demand a certain amount of freedom for their children, however, and while they are not political activists, like the Sumari their ideas often spring to prominence before large social changes, and help initiate them. The one big difference is that the Sumari deal primarily with creativity and the arts, and often subordinate family life (as Jane and I have done), while this family thinks of offspring in the terms of living art; everything else is subordinated to that “ideal.”

The Sumari often provide a cultural, spiritual, or artistic heritage for the species. This (Borledim) family provides a well-balanced earth stock — a heritage in terms of individuals. These people are kind, humorous, playful, filled with a lively compassion, but too wise for the “perverted” kind of compassion that breeds on other individuals’ weaknesses.

An artist expects his paintings to be good — or, if you will forgive a jingle: at least he should. These people expect their children to be well-balanced, healthy, spiritually keen, and so they are. You will find members of the Borledim family in almost any occupation, but the main consideration will be on the physical family unit.

The next family (Ilda) is composed of the “exchangers.” They deal primarily in the great play of exchange and interchange of ideas, products, social and political concepts. They are travelers, carrying with them the ideas of one country to another, mixing cultures, religions, attitudes, political structures. They are explorers, merchants, soldiers, missionaries, sailors. They are often members of crusades.

A good many salesmen belong in this (Ilda) category. In your terms they may be cosmopolitan, and often wealthy, so that frequent travel is possible. On the other hand, however, in certain frameworks, a humble merchant in a small country who travels through nearby provinces might also belong to this family. These are a lively, talkative, imaginative, usually likable group of people. They are interested in the outsides of things, social mores, the marketplace, current popular religious or political ideas. They spread these from place to place. They are the seed-carriers, both literally and figuratively.

The members of that family of consciousness provide frequent new options. They may be scientists, or the strictest kind of conventional missionaries abroad in alien lands. In your present time they are sometimes Indians (from India, that is), or Africans or Arabs, journeying to your civilizations. They add to the great flow of communication. They may be emotional rather than intellectual, as you understand those terms (pause), but they are restless, usually on the move. They can be actors, also.

(Pause at 10:24.) Many of the courtesans who ruled the salons of Europe belonged in the (Ilda) category, then. The Crusades⁴ involved great movement of this family, in which trade and commerce, and the exchange of political ideas, were far more important than the religious aspects. Some members of this family served as initiators of new orders in the (Catholic) church in the past — the worldly Jesuits, for example, and some of the more sophisticated popes⁵ (amused), who had a fine eye out for commerce and wealth. These people may be appreciators of fine art, but usually for its commercial value.

(10:30. “I’ve got the feeling he likes that last family,” Jane said as soon as she was out of trance, then added, laughing: “I’ve got the feeling he likes them as well as Sumari. I was picking up all kinds of things about them.” Yet her delivery had been even in pace and emphasis. Now see Note 6 for more family-of-consciousness material.

(Jane had declared before the session began tonight that she thought Seth would go into our house affairs in connection with probable realities, but that such material wouldn’t go with his book dictation on the families of consciousness. I facetiously replied that if the information didn’t fit into “Unknown” Reality we’d “force it to.” I was only half putting her on. Anything on our house hunting, I thought, would be welcome here because it would help unite these late sessions for “Unknown” Reality with some of its much earlier ones [in Volume 1, as it turned out]. It almost seemed as though we’d planned things this way.

There are all kinds of Sumari, as there is great diversity within each family of consciousness.

Your house hunting serves, however, as an excellent example of the ways in which Sumari are attracted to other Sumari, even in connection with probabilities in your system. The same relationships could be seen with other family interconnections. You have already noticed a similarity in the two houses thus far that have attracted your attention.

The first (in Sayre), mentioned far earlier in “Unknown” Reality, you thought was definitely sold, and today you discovered that the sale was not that final.¹⁰ As you discussed these issues a rather important main point escaped your minds: The man who owned the first house (Mr. Markle) was a dealer in antiques and precious stones, utterly devoted to his work and engrossed in it, considering it his art. The house has a garden on one side, with high trees, and a yard on the other, and was relatively shielded. The man’s family took second place to some extent. The kitchen and dining areas were small. He had his office downstairs and he often worked at home. His art came first.¹¹

Again, you have a small kitchen, a garden and some sheltered privacy. Both homes appealed to you, however, because the people who lived in them organized their houses about their work. This is what you picked up and reacted to. You did not react to the attitudes of others in those families who “had to put up with those conditions,” because to you they are natural.

Neither house expresses your own particular individualistic ways of life, of course, but each one comes close enough to intrigue you, and either one could be made to suit your purposes quite easily. You were attracted also because the people who put their greatest imprint upon those houses so shared some of your tendencies. In the second house your ideas of privacy were shown to you, carried to an extreme, where the windows would not even open. In the first house the stairs to the second floor were purposely steep, and never altered, because no one was invited to view the private family bedrooms. The stairs were meant to be formidable.

You find typical ranch-style homes, generally now, uncomfortable because — and this should be obvious — they are given over mainly to family living of a particular kind, colon: a kind that obviously separates work from living areas. Work is definitely done outside of the house.

Since you both work at home, those houses do not fit you, generally speaking.¹⁴ Work is not incorporated into daily family life, but certainly exists apart from it — something you find, each of you, relatively inconceivable. You can see farms better, though you are not farmers, simply because there also work and home life are one.

3. It would seem that a computerized study could be rather easily organized to investigate statements of Seth’s like this one. However, results might depend on whether Seth-Jane could identify enough members of the Borledim who had married partners from other families of consciousness.

6. I listed the families of consciousness (along with simple clues to their pronunciations) when Seth first gave them at 11:14 in the 732nd session. Here I’ll not only remind the reader of the sessions in which Seth described the characteristics of each family, but will try to summarize in a few words the overall function of each one.

See the opening notes for this session, plus Note 1, for material and references concerning the Grunaargh family of consciousness, which is related to the Gramada.

Except for the Sumari, which Jane and I choose to be allied with, there’s much we don’t know about the families of consciousness; the material is all so new. Yet my observation can even apply to aspects of our relationship with the Sumari. For instance, were any of our now-deceased parents Sumari? And regardless of whatever family each of those four people had belonged to, how had their individual family predilections affected their Sumari children? Seth’s data in these recent sessions give us clues, but we need time to put it all together.

In more general terms, how do the members of each family operate through the mechanics of reincarnation? Or of probabilities or counterparts? It’s also important to keep in mind what Seth told us in his first delivery for the 735th session: “Each personality carries traces of other characteristics besides those of the family of consciousness to which he or she might belong … A book would be needed to explain the dimensions of the psyche in relationship to the various families of consciousness.”

And Jane herself has been thinking about the whole subject of psychic interrelationships since holding the 732nd session almost a month ago. She wrote recently: “We regard Seth’s material on counterparts and families of consciousness as excellent explanations — as thematic frameworks that help us perceive and organize facets of our greater reality that are ignored by conventional academic disciplines. Seth’s explanations stand for aspects of reality that usually escape us.

“Now it seems so obvious that there must be such alliances as Seth’s families of consciousness, and that each of us alive at any given time takes part in one or more of such psychic groupings — just as we form, say, nationalistic affiliations on ordinary levels.

11. The Johnsons, the husband-and-wife real estate team who had taken us through Mr. Markle’s house in April 1974, gave us the objective information in this paragraph. I could verify those facts myself, and add a bit to them, for even 43 years later I remembered Mr. Markle and his family well. Prior to 1931, the Buttses and the Markles lived only a block apart; in Volume 1, see Note 2 for the 693rd session.