“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I read to Jane again the three questions I’d noted down for Seth during break in Monday’s session. As I suspected he might do, Seth began this evening’s session by dealing with the second one. Not all of his material tonight is given over to questions, however; much of the rest of it, covering matters other than those relating to “Unknown” Reality, is deleted.)

The Nature of Personal Reality [our last book] is there for others to follow. Others, however, did not have a hand in producing it. They will try out the ideas, many of them, to the best of their ability, and learn and gain much — all the time (much more forcefully.) hanging on safely to the banners of conventional beliefs. Ruburt has allowed himself no such comforts. He should remember that many people have far greater hassles … with health, personal relationships, finances and vocations, and without any satisfying accomplishments to offset their misfortunes.

3. Following Seth’s material in these paragraphs, then, there are of course a number of other Janes and Robs busily living out their lives in a cluster of associated probable realities — and all of those Janes and Robs are just as real to Seth as we are. I’ve had the thought before. It’s a somewhat chastening one, I said to Jane, joking, since it means that from Seth’s viewpoint we could be just two more individuals.

All sorts of interesting questions arise. Perhaps Seth likes some of those other versions of ourselves more than he does us. ( I didn’t ask him if I was right, though.) It might even be that his favorite Jane inhabits one probable reality, his favorite Rob another. How does Seth tell all of us apart? What age differences are there among us? In which reality did we produce the “best” version of “Unknown” Reality? The worst? Moreover — what do all of those other Janes and Robs think of their Seths? And so on….

13. During the 10:36 break for Session 740, which was held a couple of months ago, I wrote that the list of house connections associated with our move to the hill house had grown to over 40 items, “and continues to grow.” Jane and I have now accumulated more than 60 such interrelationships, and they range all the way from color and architectural similarities among the various houses we’ve either lived in, or felt strong emotional and psychic attachments for, to human connections like the following one. It’s neither the most inconsequential item on our list, or the most spectacular — but recently we learned through a close relative of the Steffans (I’ll call them), the couple from whom we bought the hill house, that at a small social gathering over two years ago Jane had spontaneously given something of a psychic “reading” for Mrs. Steffans. Moreover, this event had taken place in the apartment house we lived in on Water Street; not in our own quarters there, however, but in the apartment of another tenant whom we’ve known for a number of years.

As class gradually receded into the past, through our own default, as it were, Jane and I kept in touch with some of our local counterparts from class, while we saw less and less of certain others. Each choice seemed to be a matter of mutual, unspoken agreement among all concerned, and we kept in mind that each individual had the complete freedom to do as he or she wished about maintaining contact with us — just as we had in our relationships with them.

The longer we went without class, the more Jane and I saw how much its demise paralleled the ending of “Unknown” Reality. Both events were inevitable, we came to understand; both had had their time; our regrets about the finishing of both are real, while simultaneously we heartily agree that the nature of life in this physical — or “camouflage” — reality is one of unending change and renewal. Even though we may never again see many of those counterparts we’d known, we realize that all of us are indissolubly joined. Nor is the fact that a number of us are physically separated (or invisible to each of the others) of great importance, for as Seth told us recently in a private session:

“In a strange fashion, of course, the word ‘invisibility’ has meaning only in your kind of world. There is no such thing as true psychological invisibility … The physical world is dependent upon the relationship of everything from electrons to molecules to mountains to oceans, and in the scheme of reality these are all interwoven with exquisite order, spontaneity, and a logic beyond any with which you are familiar.

“The counterpart idea is merely a small attempt to hint at that interrelationship — an interrelationship that of course includes all species and forms of life.”