“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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.”

(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.

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

(The next day, Friday, Jane had an auditory “psychic” experience of sorts about the Foster Avenue situation; Saturday morning we made a formal offer to buy the house in question. For our own reasons we offered a low price, and it was promptly refused. The rejection didn’t completely close out our interest here — or Seth’s either — but it did help us put the whole matter in better perspective. Note 8 covers Jane’s inner experience and the details surrounding our house offer. [At 12:06 this evening Seth also refers to Jane’s auditory intuition.]

(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.

(Considering parallels, here’s another of the many “connections” that Jane and I have become aware of since we began our housing odyssey last year [already we’ve compiled a list of 30 similar relationships]: Three out of the four dwellings that in one way or another we’ve been seriously involved with possess driveways shared by next-door neighbors — Mr. Markle’s in Sayre; the apartment house we live in now; and the house in Elmira that we considered buying in 1964. Only the Foster Avenue place is exempt here. I see such connections as symbols running through our personal experiences.

Now: You chose your present neighborhood particularly because when you moved here (from Sayre in 1960) it was highly professional. Work and home were united. The dentist next door lives and works in the same house. So did the other dentist around the corner, and the chiropractor beside him. There was a uniting factor that you recognized, where of office and home were in the same location.

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.

Our tactics were successful in freeing us, and I suspected that we were through with Foster Avenue. Since we’d achieved our goal here, we made no immediate plans to try to find out whether others would offer more for the house.

It might be added later here that on succeeding days Jane had several more auditory-type experiences, all involving topics other than houses or “Unknown” Reality. In none of those episodes was she aware of Seth’s voice, per se, but even so we see relationships between them and the time she did hear his voice; see my description of that event at the beginning of the 710th session.

Seth’s material on Mr. Markle’s feeling for his art, however, is his (Seth’s) own. I couldn’t help here; as a boy of less than 12, I hadn’t been that consciously aware of subjective states other than my own. Although I remember my parents talking about Mr. Markle, I have little idea of how much they may have understood — or misunderstood — his basic life-style.

13. Here Seth touches upon several ramifications involving our house affairs that I’ve been saving to present all at once, if briefly. This note, then, will enlarge upon the fertile field of connections, or probabilities, that is enveloping Jane and me, the houses in Sayre and Elmira, the real estate agents we’ve been dealing with (the Johnsons and Debbie — who are not acquainted), and some other people.

I want to emphasize here that the Steins, who are teachers of music, have been attracted to a home in Elmira that was owned for many years by a man who, as a merchant, had strong connections with music in general and pianos in particular. Mr. Stein, incidentally, teaches in Elmira — hence the decision by him and his wife to move here and so eliminate his workday traveling between Sayre and Elmira.

14. A couple of weeks later I felt considerable humor upon rereading Seth’s statement here: See the notes about the hill house, inserted at the beginning of the 736th session.