“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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. I’ll simply note, then, that 24 of the 37 students in Jane’s class were born in the first half of the year. From that point on, the figures can be assembled and interpreted in different ways. Obviously they’d change within limits from class to class, depending not only on which members were in attendance, but on which ones are Sumari. Seth hasn’t pointed out every Sumari in class; some have strong feelings about belonging to that family of consciousness, but others don’t.

There is no correlation between the families of consciousness and bodily characteristics, however. Many of the Sumari choose to be born in the springtime,³ but all those born in the spring are not Sumari, and no general rule applies there. They also have a liking for certain races, but again no specific rules apply. Many of the Irish, the Jews, the Spanish, and some lesser numbers of the French, for instance, are Sumari — though they appear in all races.

We may not be able to pin Seth — as that energy personality essence calls himself — down to one physical race, but he is a Sumari: “And a very high lieutenant indeed, I will have you know,” he told us with much humor in his first session on the Sumari family of consciousness, the 598th for November 24, 1971. A month later he offered more insights on his own reality — the kind of information we’re always interested in acquiring (as I wrote in Note 7 for the 733rd session). From Session 601 for December 22 of that year, then:

“Your [Sumari] consciousness is that kind of consciousness, and so is mine, except that my boundaries are far less limited than your own, and I recognize them not as boundaries but as directions in which recognition of myself must grow. The same applies to the Sumari as such. In other words, this is not an undifferentiated consciousness that addresses you now, but one that understands the nature of its own identity.

The categories [healing, teaching, or whatever] are general descriptions of the families of consciousness. [...] 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. [...]

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!

The Sumari experience began when one family, the Sumari, learned that some class members felt alone in this world — bereft of family, often. [...] And because of that emotional and quite human experience, Ruburt allowed the Sumari development to show itself….

(It happened that in ESP class last night Seth came through with material pertaining to the nine families of consciousness he’d begun discussing a week ago; see the 732nd session. [...] The quotations also lead us back to the circumstances surrounding Seth’s delivery of his first session on the Sumari.)

“Sure, I was a Sumari then, too. [...] 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. [...]

[...] 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. [...]

(Here’s one point brought out in that deleted material: Since Seth had told Jane and me long ago that the three of us belong to the Sumari family of consciousness,⁴ we were more than curious now when he declared that the woman who presently owns the house on Foster Street is also a Sumari: “[She] added Sumari characteristics of expansiveness.” But to go a step further: According to Seth the house’s previous owner for many years, a male now deceased, had also been Sumari. [...]

[...] One Sumari may have many deeply rewarding personal relationships. [...] One Sumari might enjoy performing in front of an audience, while another might not even be able to bear the thought. Since each person is unique, the various Sumari characteristics will then appear quite differently. [...] In most cases, however, the slant of consciousness is primarily creative. [...]

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.

(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. [...]

Except for the Sumari, which Jane and I choose to be allied with, there’s much we don’t know about the families of consciousness; the material is all so new. Yet my observation can even apply to aspects of our relationship with the Sumari. For instance, were any of our now-deceased parents Sumari? And regardless of whatever family each of those four people had belonged to, how had their individual family predilections affected their Sumari children? [...]

[...] 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. [...] Sue had picked up on the Grunaargh¹ during the 598th session, which she’d recorded for me the evening after Jane had made the whole Sumari breakthrough in class, on November 23, 1971.

(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.)

They are recognizable, though as members of a family often emphasize their own individuality rather than family likenesses, so can the Sumari. The connection, the conscious connection, is important, for in that regard you are not alone. [...]

Your Sumari consciousness is that kind of consciousness, and so is mine, except that my boundaries are far less limited than your own, and I recognize them not as boundaries but as directions in which recognition of myself must grow. The same applies to the Sumari as such. This is not an undifferentiated consciousness, in other words, that addresses you now, but one that recognizes the nature of its own identity.

Now the Sumari do not exist as I exist. As my name basically makes little difference, so does the name Sumari basically make little difference. But the names signify an independent, unique kind of consciousness that makes use of certain boundaries.

The point is that I am not impersonal any more than you are, in those terms, and the Sumari in those terms are also individual and to that extent personal. You are a part of the Sumari. You have certain characteristics, in simple terms, as a family might have certain characteristics, or the members of a nation.

2. Sumari is a “family of consciousness” that Jane first contacted in ESP class for November 23, 1971. She and I are both Sumari. [...] Various Sumari examples can also be found in Chapter 20 and the Appendix of her novel, Oversoul Seven. (And, I can write later, Seth expands his family-of-consciousness material considerably in Session 732, Section 6, Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality.)

(Without a break Jane went from her Seth trance into another very creative mode of consciousness. For perhaps five minutes she sang to the class in Sumari,² the trance language she initiated a few years ago. I’ve always found the quality of her Sumari expression to be of a high order. [...] Then Jane came through as Sumari once more, but this time she spoke in conversational tones.³ Immediately she was finished, Seth returned:)

3. Jane also writes poetry in Sumari, and can translate it into English. When they’ve been recorded she can do the same with her Sumari songs and her verbal prose, as I call it. Later, as we discussed her use of Sumari in the material for this appendix, I asked her if she could describe the subjective feelings involved with her ability to go so quickly from Seth to Sumari, as well as to reverse the order.

Think of your ideas about your own sexuality in connection with those about your being and consciousness. [...] You have associated the word “female” with the unconscious, while you have been working toward what you now think of as an egotistically based consciousness. [...]

(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.

[...] There is great diversity within the family of consciousness called Sumari, as there is within any physical race, and there is also great variety within other psychic families.

(Then Jane remembered that our friend Sue Watkins had had something to do with Seth naming a second family of consciousness shortly after Jane had brought the Sumari concept through several years ago [see Note 10]. But the thing was, Jane mused now, that she didn’t think “Sue’s family” was on the list Seth had just given: “It was something like Gramada, but that wasn’t it….” [...]

Most of the people who come to Ruburt’s classes are Sumari,⁷ for example. There are eight other such psychic families — nine in all. [...] Many of the people who come here come home in the ways that [members of a physical] family attend a reunion.

Now two of you are particularly Sumari. Two of you over here in the corner here (Ron and Laurie) have still to learn that you are Sumari, but it does not matter whether you accept the fact that you are Sumari or not, because you are. And the term Sumari does not matter. [...]

There were others who were supposed to come to class tonight from afar who did not come, and they did not come because they were not Sumari. [...] And you would all do much better if you did not question the definition of Sumari, for the Sumari themselves are not structured. You are not supposed to come up with a logical definition of what Sumari is or what you are doing. [...]

(The class did a Mu then Sumari came through with another message for the family, then Seth came through again.)

I bid you all now a fond good evening and I ask you to be adventurous, to be spontaneous, to follow the ways of your own consciousness. I cannot follow the ways of your own consciousness. Only you can travel that route, for there is no other consciousness like your own, and no one can understand the truths as you can understand them, and in understanding them you create new truths. [...]

[...] (Pause.) There are alliances in all levels of reality—there are attractions that reach even bright space and time, groupings of consciousness, associations, psychic attractions that hold and mold various kinds of consciousness in a loose organization. [...] These groups of consciousness range throughout history as you know it. [...] They are far closer in your terms because of their natural affinity than they are, for example, sometimes even to other portions of their own entity, as you might be closer to a strong friend than you are to certain members of your own family, though they may be of your own blood. [...] These are true families.

[...] One Sumari is all Sumari. There are gradations, in those terms, within the Sumari alliances; therefore, everyone is not at the same level, if you follow me: it is an organization of affection, loyalty, and abilities; and there will be varying grades within their alliance. Now, everyone who was here last night was Sumari, and many who come to class, even for one time, are Sumari.

(“All right,” Rob pursued, “say some speakers are Sumari, but might another group of speakers be of another family?”)

[...] A speaker may or may not be a Sumari. Some speakers are Sumari, and some are not. [...] The relationships, however, go between realities; you can be closer, then, with another Sumari than you are with a husband or wife, particularly if you do not like the husband or wife overwell. [...]

^* Both Jane and I belong to the family of consciousness that Seth calls Sumari. Jane can write, speak, and sing in Sumari — rapid, seemingly-nonsense words that she unhesitatingly translates into English prose and poetry of great beauty. (I can write in Sumari, but Jane has to translate it for me — and I’m always surprised at the results.) My wife has a powerful singing voice. See her material on Sumari in Adventures in Consciousness.

(That concentration upon places to live reminded us of families, of course — “regular” families as well as Seth’s families of consciousness. [...] She laughed, then added: “As families of people have their genealogies, so do families of events.”⁴

The Sumari characteristics do not exist in isolation, of course. To one extent or another, each family of consciousness carries within it the characteristics inherent in all of the families. [...]

The Sumari abilities are highly creative ones, however. [...] I have been speaking of them here so that each individual can learn to recognize his or her own degree of Sumariness. [...] These qualities are particularly important as they add to, temper, or enhance the primary characteristics of the other families of consciousness.

(Pause.) If you are a “reformer,” a “reformer by nature,” then the Sumari characteristics, brought to the surface, could help you temper your seriousness with play and humor, and actually assist you in achieving your reforms far easier than otherwise. Each personality carries traces of other characteristics besides those of the family of consciousness to which he or she might belong. The creative aspects of the Sumari can be particularly useful if those aspects are encouraged in any personality, simply because their inventive nature throws light on all elements of experience.

(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. [...] All divisions are simply for the purpose of organizations of consciousness. 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.

Just before Seth began The Nature of Personal Reality: A Seth Book, for instance, I found myself embarked on a new venture I call the Sumari development. Sumari refers to a “family” of consciousnesses who share certain overall characteristics. [...]

The Sumari development constantly expanded as Seth produced this book. Now various altered states of consciousness are involved. In one I write Sumari poetry and in another I translate what I’ve written. At a different level I sing Sumari songs, showing musical knowledge and accomplishment far beyond my normal talents or background. [...] In yet another state of consciousness, material is received that is supposed to represent remnants of ancient Speaker manuscripts. [...] My husband has also written Sumari, but I have to translate it for him.

[...] For example, the novel included many Sumari poems and portions of Speaker manuscripts; and when I sing Sumari I identify with Cyprus, who is supposed to be a fictional character. [...]

Seth’s main idea is that we create our personal reality through our conscious beliefs about ourselves, others, and the world. [...] He stresses the individual’s capacity for conscious action, and provides excellent exercises designed to show each person how to apply these theories to any life situation.

If, and I am speaking now metaphorically, if-if-if-if-if there was ever a Sumari language existing in the past then it had to be created, and if you want it to be found you had better help create it. [...] There are people, there are groups of consciousness, who cannot speak. [...] There are consciousness, groups of consciousness, that try to communicate and you cannot listen because you insist that they have a language. [...]

[...] You should meet other Sumari in the dream state, and if you are on your toes you can discover some of the work that you do while you are sleeping and the Sumari that you meet. You can also learn more about yourselves by watching your conscious life and the Sumari that you may meet while you are waking. [...]

[...] In certain terms, and remembering what I told you earlier, in certain terms the Sumari language does exist, and in certain terms you know it well. The Sumaris certainly exist, and you are here because you are a Sumari. And the Sumari have a way of looking in on their own now and then and coming home. [...] This is not the case, of course, but while you think you need the bridges they are provided, and the Sumari are voices that call to you though they do not have sound. [...] You are the Sumari who communicate with you and they are you. [...]

Now if you were not the Sumari you would not be here at this particular time, and if all of you did not know what it was to be Sumari you would not be here at all. [...] Now I have—I’ve always been Sumari. I am a tough old Sumari. I am a Sumari of the old school. [...]

[...] 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.

In Section 4, then, Seth has more to say about CU and EE units, cellular consciousness, ancient man, evolution, space travel, and other seemingly disparate subjects as he continues to develop his thesis that “biologically the species is equipped to deal with different sequences of time while still manipulating within one particular time scheme.” [...] Jane does her own traveling: The “psychic library” she’s learning to visit while in a certain state of altered consciousness is described, and the ways in which the library is related to the birth of her book, Psychic Politics (which is to be published in the fall of 1976).

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

One of Jane’s earlier travels through an altered state of consciousness, in September, 1972, resulted in the first session on her unique “slow” and “fast” sounds, then led into information on faster-than-light particles, black holes, white holes, and “dead” holes. [...]

[...] 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 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.

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.

As I told you, you chose your families. You gave yourselves as adults situations with your families, mainly with yours, in which you had to relate on an entirely different level and in a different kind of role. [...] The family relationship therefore served and serves to give you a kind of contact, an enforced education, as it were, so that you can understand what goes on within such relationships.

[...] These concern your family.

[...] The family compromises began long ago, out of a misguided sense of sympathy, and now to some extent or another will continue. [...]

[...] I would like you to have several Sumari sessions together. [...]

The collection will include our family trees; my father’s journals and photographs; Jane’s and my own grade-school, high-school, college, and family data; our youthful creative efforts in writing and painting; the comic books and other commercial artwork I produced; our early published and unpublished short stories; my original notes for the sessions; session transcripts, whether published or unpublished, “regular,” private, or from ESP class; tapes, including those made in class of Jane speaking for Seth and/or singing in Sumari; our notes, dream records, journals, and manuscripts; our sketches and paintings; Jane’s extensive poetry; our business correspondence; books, contracts, and files; newsletters about the Seth material, published in the United States and abroad (independently of Jane and me); the greater number of letters from readers—in short, a mass of material showing how our separate beginnings flowed together and resulted in the production of a joint lifework.

[...] In the terms used by science, there was no evolution in linear terms, but vast (long pause) explosions of consciousness, expansions of capacities, unfoldings on the parts of all species, and these still continue. They are the inner manipulations with which consciousness presents itself.

[...] “Why, that’s where Sumari came from. [...] In here she sang some Sumari songs. [...] In between the songs she spoke to me in Sumari. [...]

[...] You also picked your father so you could watch a family situation under those terms, because you knew you weren’t going to have any children in this life. [...]

[...] It served to make me think anew that when such memories are recalled consciously, then those involved are compelled to deal with them. [...]