“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The categories [healing, teaching, or whatever] are general descriptions of the families of consciousness. You can split them up also and make further distinctions, if you choose. You can cut those divisions down. They merely represent interpretations that you can understand in your reality. In the most mundane of terms, some families are travelers, and some prefer to stay at home. But generally speaking, I have simply given you an outline which follows the characteristics of consciousness as it is embarked in physical form. I am not giving you these groups to set up divisions, but to help you understand that consciousness is diversified — that usually each of you falls, because you want to, into a certain family. And there you acquire friends, alliances, and counterparts.

Now these families fall generally into certain groups. In greater terms you can “cut the pie” however you want to, but you will still share an emotional and psychic feeling of belonging with the family of which you are a part. And (with broad amusement) most of you here are Sumari, and it demands great discipline for Sumari to take down lists — even of psychic families!

Now (Seth told us last night) you can expand the functions of any particular family group, or you can cut it down, by deciding how precise you want to be. If one family deals with the nature of healing, then you can slice it down to the healing of a toe … an ear … an eye.

The Sumari experience began when one family, the Sumari, learned that some class members felt alone in this world — bereft of family, often. A class member lost a father. Ruburt (Jane) lost a parent also. And because of that emotional and quite human experience, Ruburt allowed the Sumari development to show itself….

[...] 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.

“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. [...] 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.

“When Seth listed the families of consciousness last January,³ but didn’t include the Grunaargh, Rob asked him about it in the 738th session. In Jane’s final class, Rob read Seth’s explanation having to do with family ‘mergings.’ Right away, right there in class, I knew what was behind the feeling I’d had about this family: Members of the Grunaargh, and I personally, were involved in the invention of movable type. [...]

[...] I’ve always had the knowledge of Sumari, I think … Funny — I don’t know how to describe it, really, but I feel that through all of my lives at least one of my functions has been to act as a sort of catalyst between the Sumari and other families of consciousness. I seem to have played roles where I’d get involved with people in other families, then lead them over to the Sumari. [...]

(Before tonight’s session Jane told me that she felt the Grunaargh represented a variation of Seth’s Gramada family of consciousness. “But the important things are the family characteristics,” she said, “by whatever name. [...] There are also family combinations, and these will have their own names.” Then she reminded me that several times during the past week she’d felt that Borledim, the next family of consciousness on Seth’s list, is strongly concerned with parenthood and related roles.)

[...] 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. [...]

(Sue’s note intrigued me anew: After class I promised her that not only would I search our files about Grunaargh, but that with Seth’s help Jane and I would eventually get more information on that family, and present it somewhere in the notes for “Unknown” Reality. The point I want to make here is that others beside Jane can intuitively divine material on the families of consciousness. Actually, for whatever reasons, Sue had glimpsed a family other than Sumari before Jane had. [...]

[...] It goes without saying that members of one family often marry into other families. [...] When this occurs new stability is inserted, for this particular family acts as a source-stock, providing physical and mental strength. [...]

(I told her I’d been rather surprised when Seth had so baldly stated that there were only nine families of [human] consciousness upon our planet. [...] Jane, while agreeing, couldn’t elaborate upon this very much, beyond saying that she felt each family could have subdivisions, and/or combine with others, so that mathematically at least there existed the possibility of “a lot” of them. [...] Strangely, neither of us had ever asked Seth to name any of the other families of consciousness, following Jane’s Sumari breakthrough some three years ago — but at the end of this session see the material about the family of consciousness Sue Watkins had tuned in to back then.

Certain members of a family often act out particular roles, however, for the family as a whole. [...] Psychologists now often try to deal with the family as a whole, by allowing the different members to see how they may be exaggerating certain tendencies at the expense of others.

(11:14.) You choose to be born in a particular physical family, however, with your brothers and sisters, or as an only child. So, generally speaking, your counterparts are born in the same psychic family of your contemporaries. These families can be called Gramada —

(While we were having a snack Jane “picked up,” presumably from Seth, that the psychic families were “like your overall mood, the predominant one you carry through your lifetime….” Then she had an interesting comment as we made ready for bed; it pertained to the question I’d asked Seth about counterparts in families: “I think that maybe the family unit is designed more to take care of the reincarnational framework, instead of dealing so much with counterparts.” [...]

2. Now Seth began a rundown of the roles played by each of the families of consciousness as he’d listed them in the 732nd session. Note that he didn’t name any of them tonight, merely calling each one the “next family,” and so forth. [...] Perhaps I should have double-checked by asking Seth to rename the families, in order, but I didn’t think it necessary.

I am not, again, going into detail about the other families, but I will briefly discuss them because counterparts will generally belong to the same family.

(Because we’d been looking at houses today, Jane was excited: “How am I going to get my mind on the session?” Just before Seth came through, she reread his list of the families of consciousness that he’d given for the 732nd session. [...]

The first family that I mentioned (Gramada²), for example, specializes in organization. [...]

 (Much later and softly.) It is the name of your family. It has always been the name of your family, and there are many families. I am telling you your family name, and you are learning of your heritage. [...]

[...] It is the name of your family. [...]

([Gert:] “Are there other family names?”)

(1. Granting Seth’s concept of time: Does the reincarnating personality usually choose to experience its simultaneous lives through various families of consciousness, or is it more likely to remain “loyal” to one such family in all of them? 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.

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. Your own interests, desires, and abilities are not predetermined by your membership in a given psychic family. [...]

These figures can hardly be definitive in any sense, however; they’re meant only to point out some interesting directions for study, involving groups and the various families of consciousness to which their members may belong. [...] Seth hasn’t pointed out every Sumari in class; some have strong feelings about belonging to that family of consciousness, but others don’t.

[...] 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. [...]

There is a balance within the family. Love is expressed to you on occasions when it could not be expressed to other members of the family; but still stays within the family, you see. The family, therefore, has its strengths and its safety valves. [...]

[...] The mother feels the family lined up against her. The same sort of a situation existed basically in her own family, though in a somewhat different manner. [...]

[...] The family also uses the mother as a way of testing its own strength and unity, and as a method of channeling aggression. Often she picks up the aggression of the family, and then reacts for you all. [...]

She is one pole of the family, and you are the other (to Pete). You have the loyalty and unswerving support of the others, partially simply because their aggressions are channeled in an opposite direction and toward another family member. [...]

(Then at 11:21, here presented verbatim:) Now a note: I do not want to get into family variations, but Sue Watkins picked up a variation of the Gramada family of consciousness (the Grunaargh) — quite legitimate, and at the time very good on her part.⁴ People love to make divisions. [...] The families mix and interrelate, so that you could indeed subdivide them, but for my purpose there is little point to this.

Now it is fairly unusual to be half Italian and half Chinese, though it is possible; so some of the psychic families join more easily with certain others, and some who are very sympathetic to each other find it quite difficult to blend. The “natural earth parents” [the Borledim] and the Sumari, for instance, are very close, and yet have great difficulty in merging, because one considers the family itself as art, and the other subordinates the family for a different kind of art. [...]

(After supper tonight I asked Jane if Seth would comment on the Grunaargh family of consciousness. [...] I’ve come to think of those data involving Sue and “her” family as cropping up every so often like counterpoint to other themes in this 6th section.)

[...] Every once in a while, in your terms, a new family forms out of such subgroups. So the families are meant to be understood as general categories into which earth-tuned consciousnesses fall more or less naturally.

(“A connection with a family group, of one, five, three and two.” Both envelope objects refer to family groups. [...] Nor do the numbers fit our family groups completely. [...]

(Jane said she knew she was going astray in the data when I asked about the family group, although the envelope objects do mention family groups. [...]

(I now asked Seth to elaborate on the family group data. “The question, you see, leads Ruburt to think of a letter from your sister-in-law, concerning a change of dates for a family affair.” [...]

(“For some reason I get the impression of the words organization with the family group.” Family groups are mentioned on the envelope objects, and the vaccine was distributed by the Chemung County Medical Society, an organization.

[...] We talked about the difficulties that might be involved in getting family members to talk openly to strangers, too, about what had happened to them. [...] Also, how would one explain to a family that with Seth’s ideas in mind certain other family members had chosen, or planned, their deaths? Not an easy thing to do at all, unless lots of time was available, and perhaps an exceptional willingness to learn on the parts of such families. I suppose that part of any such survey could also go into the refusal of certain families to restudy what had happened to them in the light of Seth’s ideas.

[...] It’s attached to this session as page 302 and describes what seems to be in ordinary terms a senseless and horrendous story: A 20-year-old drunken driver crashed head-on into another auto, killing two people, the father and an aunt, and putting the other five passengers, all members of the same family, into the hospital. [...] For my part, although I believe Seth’s contention that there are basically no accidents, I was still torn between understanding of that premise, and outrage that a young drunk could wreak such havoc on a seemingly innocent family of seven people. [...] In short, I thought it grossly unfair that the cause of the accident was still alive—although hospitalized —while two “innocent” victims were dead, with a whole family damaged beyond repair, for life. [...]

[...] A detailed study of one large family group so involved in a tragedy could easily take up an entire book. Another approach would be half and half: First the family story in usual terms; then that same family story studied with Seth’s ideas in mind. [...]

[...] It would be for the author to conduct a survey of the surviving members of families involved in such accidents, to study the after-effects, see what changes the tragedy had brought about in their lives, their habits, ways of thinking and looking at life—in short, the detailed study of each family case history would comprise an intimate, in-depth probing of all the complicated effects that had resulted from that single tragic event.

In your dream you nicely placed the family in the garage, outside of the closed house, you see. The garage was also a symbol, the place where a vehicle is kept; and your family’s car being used no longer, being a symbol of your father’s body, that he will soon discard.

[...] On another level it stated indeed that the psychic reality of the family in a large manner would disappear from physical reality. Your parents at their death will take the strongest burden of that identity, the family identity, with them. [...]

[...] The fetus however will also react to the death of an animal in the family, and will already be acquainted with the unconscious psychic relationships within the family, long before it reaches the sixth month. [...]

[...] Upon returning the same day I took down the screens and put up the storm windows on the family home in Sayre, PA. [...]

(Pause.) In your terms, think of those ancestors in your family history. Now think of yourself and your contemporary family. [...]

[...] The family tree exists at once — but that tree is only one tree that appears in the land of time. [...] There are probable family trees, then. [...]

[...] For now, however, I would like each reader to consider the members of his or her family, so that in a more direct fashion the reader can find in private experience a realization of some ideas I want to present.

Then think of your ancestors, your immediate family, and your children, and sense in them the vast potential that is there. [...]

[...] There is however uneasiness, as you know, in the family, and the boy operates in such a manner that he picks up the inner feelings of the others, and is left to handle them as best he can. The mother is more important in the family group than our friends realize.

In a strange manner she holds the family together, simply because they unite so strongly against her. [...] A rather delicate psychological gestalt operates with the family as a whole. [...]

[...] It is possible, however, to carry this idea even further, so that a person in poor health should be seen by the physician in relationship to the family, and also in relationship to the environment. Old-time family doctors understood the patient’s sensitivity to family members and to the environment, of course, and they often felt a lively sympathy and understanding that the practitioners of modern medicine often seem to have forgotten.

Many psychiatrists and psychologists now realize that a disturbed client (long pause) cannot be helped sufficiently unless the individual is considered along with his or her relationship to the family unit.

[...] Your ideas about your own body, your mind, the universe and your part in it, and your relationship to family, friends, and environment are all connected to your state of health, to your sense of well-being, or your feelings of dis-hyphen-ease. [...]

[...] And an A, with a large family and a particular picture of the family, old, three girls with large hair ribbons, two boys, several years older, picture taken on porch steps very early 1900’s. Perhaps in a city B or the name begins with B. And a sister, a career woman before this was general practice.

Originally five in the family.

[...] The doctor who tended her was an old family friend, knew both the father and son, both doctors.)

Also a home in the country that seems to belong to your family or husbands.

[...] And an A, with a large family and a particular picture of the family, old, three girls with large hair ribbons, two boys, several years older, picture taken on porch steps very early 1900’s. Perhaps in a city B or the name begins with B. And a sister, a career woman before this was general practice. [...]

Originally five in the family. [...]

[...] The doctor who tended her was an old family friend, knew both the father and son, both doctors.) Two brothers. [...]

[...] Rachel’s mother died at 35, shortly after giving birth to Rachel.) Also home in the country that seems to belong to your family or husbands. [...]

[...] 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. The Sumari family that Jane and I choose to be allied with is one of these. Seth names each family, describes it, and shows how its characteristics interlock with those of other families. Thus the combined actions of the families of consciousness make our world as we know it.

The next, psychic family dream represented an actual reunion of some Sumari family members, so that Ruburt would not feel so alone, but realize he did indeed have rich emotional connections with others, at other levels, and that he was part of a family of creative initiators, full of energy and vigor, who could go out into the world or cheerfully forget it if they chose.

[...] Then on the afternoon of the 25th she had a nap-dream adventure featuring a family reunion, my father, and others. It seemed to involve the Sumari family of consciousness, she wrote.

The dream also represented the coming birth of new material, for the “family members” gave each other new information and bits of knowledge, so that this was also a reunion of portions of the psyche.

[...] When hospitalization is required, however, family members should try to act as honestly and openly as possible. It is a good idea for such family members to join other groups of people who are in the same situation, so that they can express their own doubts and hesitations.

[...] If the person is mourning the death of a spouse or close family member, then it would be most beneficial for the individual or the family to purchase, or otherwise provide, a new small pet. [...]

Some family members, in fact, may be quite surprised by a barrage of unexpected reactions. [...]