“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.

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.

(10:01.) Throughout the ages they have served as the spreaders of ideas, the assimilators. They (the Ilda) turn up everywhere. They were pirates and slaves as well, historically speaking. They are often primarily involved in social changes. In your time they may be diplomats, as they were also in the past. Their characteristics are usually those of the adventuresome. Very seldom do they live in one place for long, although they may if their occupation deals with products from another land. Individually they may seem highly diverse in nature, one from the other, but you will not find them as a rule in universities as teachers. You might find them as archaeologists in the field, however.

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 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.

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.

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.

(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.

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.

When Debbie took Jane and me through the Foster Avenue house on February 5, she told us that another couple — who live in Sayre, and whom I’ll call the Steins — had also inspected the property and planned to make an offer for it, while trying at the same time to sell their present home. Without thinking too much about it, we mentally filed this bit of news along with the connections that had developed out of our house-hunting episodes last year; even now, we still didn’t realize just how the complicated relationships between those events of April 1974, and now, were to continue growing. For instance: When Jane and I “rediscovered” Mr. Markle’s house in Sayre today (February 17), and saw to our considerable surprise that it might still be for sale, we at once visited the Johnsons, who had shown us through it last year. We were then in for another surprise — for the Johnsons are the agents in charge of selling the Steins’ residence in Sayre.