“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You usually live with your physical family, though this does not always apply; sometimes your ancestors come from various countries, so there is a physical lineage that you understand. There are often homecomings, where distant relatives return to the homestead. Now psychically the same applies in terms of counterparts. If you belong to any particular groups, often your closest counterparts will also be there. You will be a counterpart from their viewpoint, by the way. Many political, civic, educational or religious groups are composed of counterparts.

Alan Koch and Ruburt are counterparts. Carl Jones⁹ and Bill Herriman and Bill Granger are counterparts. Norma Pryor is a counterpart of Joseph’s, and vice versa. The young man from Pennsylvania who comes every other week is a counterpart of Ruburt’s. But [all of] this applies to any group.

1. It will be remembered that Seth first mentioned his concept of counterparts in the ESP class session for Tuesday evening, November 18, 1974, rather than in dictation for “Unknown” Reality; see the opening notes for Session 721. In those notes I also referred to the experiences of my Roman and Jamaican counterparts — episodes that, I wrote, “played some considerable part in establishing a foundation, or impetus for such a development” (as the counterpart one). Then see all of Seth’s material on counterparts in the 721st session itself.

5. Seth has already referred to counterpart relationships at the extremes of distance, and, to a lesser extent, in terms of age and cultural differences. Jane and I can represent the direct involvement of counterparts; see the 726th session after 11:40. Then see Seth’s material in Appendix 21 on the counterpart association that Florence, a student in ESP class, has with a young man in China. I’m almost 10 years older than Jane; Florence is probably 25 years older than her Chinese counterpart.

[...] Seth’s naming a good number of class members as counterparts came as no great surprise to Jane and me — but it did make us more than a little suspicious at first. We’ve been thinking about counterpart ideas since Seth introduced the concept two months ago; see the opening notes for the 721st session. Then, in the 726th session, Seth named Jane and me as counterparts of each other. [...] Yet I felt no strong surge of emotion, for instance, to learn that Norma Pryor [whom I’ve met but a few times], Peter Smith, and Jack Pierce are counterparts of mine — nor did they when I read Seth’s material to them during ESP class six nights later. Jane’s feelings were pretty similar to mine, when Seth named three students as her counterparts: Sue Watkins, Zelda, and “the young man from Maryland….”

(Student Bill Herriman is a professional pilot who flies a considerable distance to Elmira for class; his counterpart in class, Carl Jones, lives in Elmira each summer while giving instructions in sailplane flying, the third member of the counterpart trio, Bill Granger, is not a member of class, lives in Elmira, has always had a deep interest in aircraft, and is now learning to pilot sailplanes. [...] The close observer could, I think, find among the three men more physical and psychological correlations [some having to do with illness], as well as meaningful opposing features, so that in this instance the counterpart relationships can be seen as quite apropos.

[...] Psychic matters weren’t stressed, and counterpart ideas weren’t even mentioned. [...] Still, it’s worth noting that being in the presence of a relative stranger who may also be one’s counterpart does make some sort of interior difference in response or attention. I wondered about the countless times counterparts had unwittingly gathered on similar occasions, and what sort of numberless exchanges had taken place on unconscious levels between those who were psychically related in some fashion.

(My counterpart, Peter Smith, and I are both professional artists; we’re roughly of an age, with strong interests in other forms of creativity, such as writing, and in myth and fantasy.¹ A number of the similarities and differences between Jane and me should be obvious to our readers; she also does quite a lot of painting. Both of my other class counterparts, Norma Pryor and Jack Pierce, are themselves of a younger generation than Jane, Peter, and I. Jack writes novels, as yet unpublished. [...]

(“Well,” I said to Jane after class, as we discussed the Chinese-American situation cited by Seth, “I don’t know about counterpart relationships in other kinds of realities, but it’s certainly obvious that at least some physical counterparts can hate each other …” So the larger self, I thought, would be quite capable of seeking experience through its parts in every way imaginable. Although it might be difficult for us to understand, let alone accept, the whole self or entity must regard all of its counterparts as sublime facets of itself — no matter whether they loved, suffered,⁵ hated, or killed each other or “outsiders.” Within its great reaches it would transform its counterparts’ actions in ways that were, quite possibly, beyond our emotional and intellectual grasp. [...]

(Jane and I consider Seth’s concept of counterparts to be an intriguing psychological framework, spacious enough to serve as a workable thematic structure in which the social and nationalistic characteristics of our species can be studied, as well as the components of the individual psyche. That is, the private person is here seen as interacting with others because there is, beneath our awareness, an inner “person-to-person” relationship connecting each individual with his or her physical counterparts, though they may well be living in other parts of the globe while sharing the same historical period. It follows, then, that one may or may not ever meet a counterpart “in the flesh” — may or may not even suspect the existence of such relationships.

(So far we’ve been dealing with the idea of counterparts in our own physical reality. By way of contrast, however, Seth stated last month in the 713th session, after 10:32:) Nothing exists outside the psyche, however, that does not exist within it, and there is no unknown world that does not have its psychological or psychic counterpart. (Before that, from Session 712:) To some extent or another, there are counterparts of all realities within your psyche.

(The material on counterparts emerged from Seth’s treatment of reincarnation. Along with his addition of simultaneous time, I’d say that the concept of counterparts provides reincarnation with a novel approach indeed; and that our awareness of both has always been latent within the reincarnational framework, whether in simultaneous or linear terms.

Psychically, you are made up of counterparts, as physically you come from various races. There are far more counterpart groupings than there are races, but then your definition of races is arbitrary. [...] Counterparts can be better related to physical families, for you might well have four or five counterparts alive in one century, as you might have four or five family members spanning the same amount of time. Basically, however, counterparts deal with fulfillments and developments that transcend races or countries.

(2. Once when Jane woke up she had the idea of “counterparts and four-fronted selves” in mind. As she wrote today: “There might be four counterparts alive in one general time period — a century — for example. [...] Each person is distinct, yet each is an added dimension of the others, so that on different levels the four [in this case] create an alliance and become a four-fronted counterpart self; covering a given century … This is a ‘working alliance’ that exists in potential form always. But the four-fronted counterpart self’s own sense of continuity is not broken up; it persists outside of space and time, while its parts — the individual selves, or counterparts — live in space and time….”⁶

(Yesterday afternoon, to my surprise, I had still another internal vision experience with a Roman counterpart self of mine in the first century A.D.; it was reminiscent of my three Romans of last October, yet perplexing, too — for this time I saw a different Roman counterpart. [...]

[...] This greater personage then has earthly counterparts, each individual alive taking part in the vital human drama of any given century. Each learns from the others, and the counterparts fit together like mosaics — except that these mosaics are fully endowed with independence and free will. [...]

“Seth’s data and my own on counterparts make sense to me. [...] But I question, at least provisionally, any idea of past or counterpart lives that I lived one hundred percent. [...]

You have heard terms like “The Brotherhood of Man,” or, as Ruburt might say, “The Brother-Womanhood of Women” (humorously). But at any given time, in your terms — at any given time — the population of the earth is made up of counterparts … and so when you kill an enemy, you are killing a version of yourself … For as you are members of a physical species, you are also members of a psychic kind of counterpart reality; and this membership straddles races or countries, or states or politics.

11. It’s of interest here to note that although he referred to my three Roman-officer perceptions of last October in the 721st session (which itself was held a month after I’d experienced them), Seth didn’t mention that I had a second Roman-soldier counterpart living in the same time and area of the world in the first century A.D. I didn’t ask about any such possibility, either. [...] If his material on counterparts is correct, any of us could have many such relationships going in a given century — too many to conveniently uncover, perhaps, considering the physical time that would be necessary to do the psychic work.

[...] The little adventure certainly fits in with Seth’s idea of counterparts, as he introduced it in the 721st session, but it raises a number of questions, too. [...]

[...] Seth also offers major material on his theories involving “counterparts.” [...] (And yes, I can write here that sometimes counterparts meet.)

Section 6: Reincarnation and Counterparts: The “Past” Seen Through the Mosaics of Consciousness.

[...] For instance, he lets his ideas about reincarnation and counterparts lead into another main concept — that of the “families of consciousness,” as he calls them. [...]

Of my three class counterparts other than Jane, then, it developed that Norma Pryor and Jack Pierce soon embarked upon their own paths, which hardly ever cross mine even though we don’t live that far apart. [...] On Jane’s part, one of her counterparts, Zelda, has traveled far away, although maintaining a tenuous, infrequent contact by mail. [...] And Jane has seen her fourth counterpart, “the young man from Pennsylvania …” but once since class stopped meeting.

We also applied the counterpart ideas to ourselves. Seth named a number of counterparts among class members in the 732nd session — including, for example, a total of nine involving Jane and me (counting the psychic relationships between us) — and I wrote about those connections in Appendix 25 for that session.

[...] They took Seth’s ideas with them, however, and with considerable interest Jane and I thought of them as not only looking for truths but meeting counterparts. [...]

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. [...]

(Jane’s own counterpart material included variations of Seth’s basic concept. [...] We can be a child at one end of it and an old man or woman at the other … Michelangelo [who lived for 89 years, from 1475 to 1564] decided to span a century himself instead of as three counterparts, say. [...] He wouldn’t necessarily want or need the counterparts, at least for those purposes. [...]

You are counterparts of yourselves, but as Ruburt would say (amused), living “eccentric”¹¹ counterparts, each with your own abilities. [...]

[...] But each of those incarnations will have its cluster of counterpart lives, revolving around it like planets around a sun. Within that context, of course, each counterpart personality thinks of itself as being the sun, or the center of things….”¹⁶ Yawning, Jane agreed.

(This session on counterparts represents a key point in Seth’s discussion of the unknown reality. [...] Some earlier intimations of the counterpart concept are also briefly discussed there.)

Now this first island is very clever indeed, and so it sends its spirit wandering to the closest counterpart, and says: “You are myself, but without sand or palm trees.”

[...] My life is far the better, and you two are only poor shadowy counterparts of me.”

[...] You must be some counterpart, drunken with sensation, not realizing the purity of my own stripped-down nothingness.”

[...] “We are counterparts, each of the other, yet inviolate.”

[...] She also knew of my questions about counterparts that I’d come up with as a result of my work on The “Unknown” Reality: were Jane and I counterparts; and, to resolve a contradiction—in two different sessions in that book, were George Rhoads and I counterparts, or weren’t we? [...]

[...] “Counterparts” hint of others. [...] Counterparts can alter affiliations—a fact I did not mention earlier, simply because then it would have added a confusion.

[...] My new book will break beyond the concept of counterparts—as that concept broke beyond the concept of reincarnation.

[...] (Long pause.) The idea of counterparts was meant to lead you beyond time-oriented reincarnational ideas.

(I mentioned that it would be interesting to get from Seth sometime information about the counterpart—families of consciousness concepts as pertaining to other than human creatures. [...] I came up with the question the other day, also, because I’m working with his counterpart material for Section 6 in Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality.)

I have mentioned counterparts in a very gentle fashion, and families of consciousness, as these are related to mankind. [...]

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

I will have more to say, broadening the concepts of counterparts, though most probably in a different way than you might have supposed.

1. In Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality Seth began developing his theory of counterparts — that the larger psychological self, or entity, of each of us manifests not just one physical life in any given century, say, but several, so as to gain that much more experience in a variety of roles involving different ages, nationalities and languages, sexual orientations, family roles, and so forth. As I understand the counterparts thesis, the individual may or may not meet at least some of his or her counterparts, scattered as they can be among earth’s different countries and cultures. Jane and I have encountered a few of our respective counterparts, however, principally through her now-defunct ESP class.

(We’re presenting his material for me because it has good general application: If Seth deals with my own painted images without even mentioning the words reincarnation or counterparts, still he does reveal how such “residents of the mind” make up part of each person’s innate knowledge of his or her own greater — or larger — self.

1. I can note a good deal later that Seth’s material on our making further distinctions in the families of consciousness, beyond the nine he’s already named for us, is certainly related to the passages from a private session that I quoted in the last three paragraphs of Note 8 for the 732nd session: Seth stated that Peter Smith and I “are and are not counterparts” — that with another in this life each of us may often come together, then part, “forming a counterpart relationship when it suits your purposes….”

[...] And there you acquire friends, alliances, and counterparts.

(Obviously, some counterpart selves can meet physically, as reincarnational selves cannot. Under circumstances and in ways explained in Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality, again, Jane and I think we’ve encountered a few of our counterpart selves. Just for fun, try to imagine the complicated relationships that can obtain within only a family of five, say, when each member exists within his or her much larger family of reincarnational and counterpart selves. Let the mathematicians among our readers calculate the number of possible psychic interchanges alone that can arise in the “past, present, and future” involving the reincarnational and counterpart selves of these five people!)

[...] Within the context of my discussion, reincarnation is Seth’s historical version of his counterpart concept, which is that each of us is physically connected with certain other males and females who are living at the same time we are, and who are exploring physical life from a variety of viewpoints in ways that no one physical self could possibly match. This means that each reincarnational self has its own cluster of counterpart selves within its own time period, and that all are interconnected on nonphysical levels, joining together like magical gears meshing in constantly changing patterns across time and reality. And once one understands ideas of reincarnation and counterparts in these terms, it becomes difficult to think of one without the other, so inevitable do they appear to be.

At such times I’m apt to think about ideas of reincarnation and counterparts. [...] Our gross physical senses, and indeed our very bodies, insist upon interpreting the spacious present in linear terms, however—through the inevitable processes of birth, aging, and death—so to help us get his point here Seth advances his ideas of reincarnational selves and counterpart selves in ways we can understand sensually.

Among the subjects not discussed so far are Seth’s (and our own) ideas on reincarnation, counterparts, probable realities, and Frameworks 1 and 2. Jane briefly referred to Seth’s “magical approach” material in her dictation last month (see her own session of April 16, 1982, in Essay No. [...]

[...] But you and George are and are not counterparts. [...]

[...] In this life, you come together and part, come together and part again, forming a counterpart relationship when it suits your purposes, as streams of consciousness might mix and merge, and then separate.

These counterparts are psychic relationships, formations that in the deepest terms flow into historic time and out of it. [...]

[...] At the end of the 732nd session I expressed the hope that “… we’d soon begin to get the material we wanted …” from him on whether the counterpart and family-of-consciousness mechanisms applied to other species and forms than our own; hence my second question this evening. [...] Not only that: I must note that even several years later we’ve still acquired no Seth material at all on such possible counterpart and family-of-consciousness roles. [...]

Dictation: There is a connection between counterparts and the families of consciousness.

As you and your brothers or sisters might belong to the same physical family, so generally are you and your counterparts part of the same psychic group of consciousness.¹ Remember, however, that these psychic groups are like natural formations into which consciousness seems to flow. [...]

[...] At the start of tonight’s session Seth had remarked that generally speaking counterparts are part of the same psychic family, but I wanted to know if reincarnating personalities are also.

It is not simply that some weak electrical force exists within the physical body, but that a portion of the physical body has its actual existence within a strong force field; that the whole physical body has counterparts, so to speak, within this force field, and that so far man has discovered only the comparatively weak electrical charges of one particular kind in general, that most obviously protrudes into the physical universe.

[...] The skin does not exist within this electric counterpart, although the physical skin does contain electric force.

[...] The electric counterpart to the physical body exists, then, as an identity formed by various electrical systems operating more or less as one. [...]

Because your system is dependent upon the electrical system in one way or another, counterparts exist within the electrical system for all such phenomena. [...]

Obviously, some ESP class members met counterparts in class. But I know that I’ve also met a counterpart outside of class, and later in life: Laurel Lee Davies, the beautiful young lady from Iowa who’s been my loving companion for some years now, following Jane’s death in 1984. [...] I feel that Laurel’s and my relationship is a clear case in which a long-standing “unknown” counterpart connection came into our consciousnesses when we were ready for it to, and that eventually it led to our meeting. [...]

[...] To Seth, George and Jane and Sue and I are “counterparts” — entities psychically connected to each other, and to other men, women, and children alive now in this country and in others. [...]

For much more Seth material on the counterpart concept, see Session 732 and Appendix 25 in Volume II of The “Unknown” Reality (Published by Amber-Allen Publishing, Inc., San Rafael, CA). [...]

[...] You are indeed counterparts, then, each of the other. Yet as there is great variety to physical form, so counterparts follow a still more expansive inner freedom that finds an even greater diversity of characteristics.

(All emphatically and joyously:) In your terms, the world is intensely different from one moment to another, with each smallest portion of consciousness choosing its reality from a field of infinite probabilities.³ Immense calculations, far beyond your conscious decisions as you think of them, are possible only because of the unutterable freedom that resides within minute worlds inside your skull — patterns of interrelationships, counterparts so cunningly woven that each is unique, freewheeling, and involved in an infinite cooperative venture so powerful that the atoms stay in certain forms, and the same stars shine in the sky.

[...] You and your counterparts together form it. [...]

[...] Souls and molecules each are learning, each are forming realities, each are a part of a divinity in which each counterpart has a part to play.”

[...] I am alert to the fact that I am using many terms, and that it may seem difficult to understand the differences between probable and reincarnational selves, counterparts and families of consciousness. [...]

When I speak in terms of counterparts, then, or of reincarnational selves and probable selves, I am saying that in the true symphony of your being you are violins, oboes, cymbals, harps — in other words, you are a living instrument through which you play yourself. [...]

To some degree you feel the same way when you encounter the concept of probable selves, or of counterparts. [...]

[...] All of the counterparts alive as contemporaries then form, together, a musical composition in what you think of as a present; and once that multidimensional song is struck then its past ripples out behind it, so to speak, and its future sings “ahead.” [...]