“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

(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.

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

The second house (on Foster Avenue in Elmira) was owned for years by the people who gave it its character. The large living room was so spacious just so that it could hold a grand piano. The man who owned the house thought of pianos as his art (he was in the business of selling them), and the living room was simply meant to set a piano off.

(11:43. I told Jane that, once heard, much of Seth’s material had the quality of being so obvious that we in turn seemed to be quite opaque not to have reached the same conclusions ourselves. After considering the alternatives Seth suggested immediately following last break I decided to leave his delivery in place in the session as a guide for the reader; parallels can be drawn with many other situations, I think having nothing to do with art or houses.

(A clarification: Seth didn’t actually suggest that Jane and I buy the “1964 house.” His statements just before break that he did so are distortions on Jane’s part, I would say, while speaking for him tonight; even in trance, her memory could have been in error — or she could have been touching upon another probable reality. What Seth did talk about, and quite legitimately, were the benefits we’d enjoy if we did acquire that place. He discussed the whole affair in the 65th session for Sunday, June 28, 1964, using passages like: “I am certainly not going to make any decisions for you. The house you looked at today should prove an excellent buy …” and, “If you purchase the house …” and, “You will have to make your own decisions.”¹⁵

The present owner, even, of the Foster house thinks of it as “work,” since she herself is a … working [real estate] person. Ruburt finds the rugs there out of place, however, because they do not fit in with his ideas of work areas. The owner, however, is quite proud of them. Her work in that respect is to decorate, and the rugs represent her idea of what belongs in the house.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.