“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“My heavyset friend was filled with the thrill of knowing that now words would spread faster. This is hard to specify, but he had the same feeling I have now about newspapers — the daily spreading out of ideas, and the kind of tremendous power behind that ability … I can see that corner of his shop/work area clearly in a half-light, illuminated by a candle in an enclosed mesh lantern sitting on a tabletop. This man had several apprentices, and he was a real artisan, putting ideas across in the form of movable type. I know that Gutenberg is credited with this invention, and probably rightly so; but I also feel this as one of those discoveries that appeared in several places at once, and that my beefy fellow’s shop was in the general vicinity of Gutenberg’s — in Germany? I can’t recall. This idea was ‘shared’ in many places at once, then.⁶

(Jane’s ESP class for Tuesday evening, February 25, took place the day after the 739th session was held, and was her last one before we began preparing for our move to the hill house. Sue Watkins was present. During class I read aloud Seth’s material from the 738th session on the Grunaargh family of consciousness,¹ which Sue had tuned in to during the 598th session for November 24, 1971. After class, Sue told us that she believed she’d been associated with the Grunaargh family — in Europe — through printing processes dating from the 1400’s, or possibly somewhat earlier. Since Sue herself is a Sumari, like Jane and me, I asked her to write an account of her feelings, thinking it would furnish a good example of one person’s emotional and intellectual involvement with a family of consciousness other than their own — and yes, of their reincarnational memories of those activities.

6. Sue could well be correct here. It’s believed that Johann Gutenberg (1400?–1468) was experimenting with movable metal type in Strasbourg, Germany, before 1448 — but there’s also possible evidence of printing from such type in Holland by 1430, for instance. (And typography itself was known, but not much used, in China and Korea in the 11th century.) In about 1448 Gutenberg became a citizen of Mainz, Germany, where he continued his work. By then, of course, the news about printing was spreading throughout Europe.

“When I first mentioned the family name, Grunaargh (as Seth spelled it out for us in that session over three years ago), I knew that its members had something to do with printing, or the promulgation of printed material. Since at the time I was working as a typesetter,² I figured my impression had derived from that. However, after that session my impression ‘grew’ in such a way that I knew this family had something to do in a more direct way with the printing process — with the fascination of putting ideas down on paper through the use of typefaces that would, as much as the language involved, express the ideas behind the words themselves. In the plant where I worked at the time, I ‘recognized’ several people in the Grunaargh family — all were printers — and with a feeling quite as strong as the recognition I had for Sumari.

Ruburt was correct: The picture of you, taken on the hill in the front yard (by a friend), portrays you as far as your stance toward the hill house and land is concerned. Ruburt was never athletically inclined, but always loved nature. [...]

[...] Of course we knew what Seth had suggested during last Wednesday’s session, and his advice was valuable; at the same time we’d been strongly inclined to make the purchase after looking at the house anew that Wednesday afternoon. [...]

I mentioned that the air was cleaner on the hill. [...]

[...] She told me now, however, that she was entering a relaxed state. [...]