“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(At the conclusion of the 720th session I mentioned the Roman-soldier visions I’d had near the end of October, and added that I would soon go into my questions about them. Before I could do so, however, I had another experience with psychic perceptions three days later — on November 16 — that led to more questions. This one wasn’t a “Roman,” though, but a series of very vivid impressions of myself as a black woman on the island of Jamaica, in the Caribbean Sea. The time period was — is — the 19th century. See Note 1.

(“Jamaica” took place on a Saturday, and Seth referred to it briefly in the next session, on Monday night. That session turned out to be private, rather than one for book dictation. Seth came back to Jamaica in Jane’s ESP class the next evening [on November 19]; at the same time he began discussing his concept of “counterparts,” which he formally introduces in tonight’s [721st] session for “Unknown” Reality. His material enhances my Roman and Jamaican visions [and others] — which saves me considerable effort in figuring them out for myself, of course. And, obviously, Seth does a much better job of putting them all together than I could.

(I’d like to add that I hardly think it a coincidence, however, that within less than a month from my “first Roman,” Seth was to initiate a body of information in which he began to clarify many of the questions I had about certain of my own psychic adventures. I don’t think those events directly led Seth into beginning his new material, but in retrospect Jane and I agree that they certainly played some considerable part in establishing a foundation, or impetus, for such a development.

Lately Joseph has found himself embarked upon a series of episodes that seem to involve reincarnational existences. There was a catch, however. He saw himself as a woman — black. Last month he also saw himself as a Roman soldier aboard a slave ship. He previously had experience that convinced him that he was a man called Nebene.⁹ All of this could have been accepted quite easily in conventional terms of reincarnation, but Joseph felt that Nebene and the Roman soldier had existed during the same general time period, and he was not sure where to place the woman (but see Note 1).

You are counterparts of yourselves, but as Ruburt would say (amused), living “eccentric”¹¹ counterparts, each with your own abilities. So Joseph “was” Nebene, a scholarly man, not adventurous, obsessed with copying ancient truths, and afraid that creativity was error; authoritative and demanding. He feared sexual encounter, and he taught rich Roman children.

At the same time, in the same world and in the same century, Joseph was an aggressive, adventurous, relatively insensitive Roman officer, who would have little understanding of manuscripts or records — yet who also followed authority without question.¹²

Give us a moment … Joseph’s focus of identity is his own. He will follow it. He was not Nebene, or the Roman officer or the woman. Yet they are versions of what he is, and he is a version of what they “were,” and at certain levels each is aware of the others. There is constant interaction.¹³

The Roman soldier dreams of the black woman, and of Joseph. There is a reminiscence that appears even in the knowledge of the cells, and a certain correspondence.¹⁴ There are connections then as far as cellular recollection is concerned, and dreams. Now the Roman soldier and Nebene and the woman went their separate ways after death, colon: They contributed to the world as it existed, in those terms, and then followed their own lines of development, elsewhere, in other realities. So each of you exists in many times and places, and versions of yourselves exist in the world and time that you recognize. As you are part of a physical species, so you are a part of a species of consciousness. That species forms the races of mankind that you recognize.

I’m most gratified that some of the Jamaican visions were externalized, that I didn’t see all of them within as I did for the Roman series. That is, with open eyes I saw fleeting hectic images in the studio. I felt emotions. I was exhilarated by the whole thing.

12. My Roman-soldier self might have “followed authority without question,” as Seth states in this (721st) session, yet he must have behaved with more than a little guile. In a private session held some time after he’d finished “Unknown” Reality, Seth again referred to the Roman — doing so because of additional material I’d produced about that first century personality. Seth:

“As a Roman, you pretended to be a follower while you were a man of rank in the military. You had no belief in the conventional gods, yet you were supposed to be conquering lands in their names. You traveled even to Africa. You had a disdain for leaders as liars, and of the masses as followers, and so you were always in one kind of dispute or another with your fellows, and even with the authorities. You were of a querulous nature, yet highly curious, and, again, physically involved.

13. The “constant interaction” that Seth mentioned as involving myself, Nebene, the Roman soldier, and the black woman, Maumee, obviously takes place on other-than-usual conscious levels — at least in my case, that is. For while I was having experience as the Roman, for instance, I had no feeling for Nebene, or Maumee — no idea of reincarnation, or of counterparts either. Each “time” I tuned into one of those personalities I was too caught up in that particular role to be aware of any of the others. Now, however, as I write this I can at least feel ideas about them in the back of my mind….