“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I was one of six honorary pallbearers. We stood outside after the service, three in a row facing each other on the porch, while six others carried Joe’s casket between us and down the steps to the hearse.

(I found the whole funeral experience quite interesting, though I understood little of what was going on. A priest gave a short talk at the funeral home, leading it off, maybe for shock value, by telling us that sooner or later every one of us would experience the same thing Joe Bumbalo had. The room was very impressive, with its beamed ceiling. I thought the timeless quality, of light and so forth, inside the large room where the casket lay was more than a little symbolic in itself, isolated as the room was from the apparent time of day, night, or season.

(I could see how each move of the burial process had been carefully evolved to help the bereaved family separate from the one who had died. After all, the process had been refined through the centuries.

(The priest in charge — there were three of them — said that Joe had planned much of the service himself, and that Joe had asked him: “Why are the good ones taken?” The priest enlarged the question to: “Why is anyone taken?”

(It was all part of the ritual, Jane said later as we went over the booklet together in 330. Only now she was surprised to see that it was printed all in English. In her day it had been printed in Latin on one page, with the English translation on the page opposite. The new way seemed very strange to her.