“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The comical series of events involving Floyd, one of his sons, and another helper had started this noon: “Hell, Rob, it’s a coon!” a surprised Floyd called down to me from the roof of the house, after the beam from his flashlight had illuminated the black mask across the animal’s face and made its eyes shine as it crouched at the base of the fireplace chimney. The raccoon had evidently picked the site as a secure, heated refuge from the winter weather to come. The three men vainly tried several methods to coax the half-wild, half-tame creature back up the chimney. Finally Floyd opened the damper a bit and lit a sheet of newspaper in the fireplace: The smoke immediately sent our very upset tenant scrambling up the chimney, across the roof and into the hemlock tree growing at one corner of the front porch. Then while his two helpers stood guard to keep the raccoon in the tree, Floyd lugged a very heavy flat stone up the ladder and planted it across the chimney; he’s going to cement a wire mesh in place as a permanent seal against animals and birds.

I pushed Jane in her chair out on the porch, as close to the hemlock as we could get behind the floor-to-ceiling glass; we looked up at the chattering animal from only three feet away. We’d seen raccoons playing in the tree a few times, and Floyd, who lives on a farm, sees them often. This one was fully grown and bore a heavy coat of mixed black, brown, and gray hair; the colors exactly matched those of the tree trunk. In the gloomy day we couldn’t see eyes in the black face. We couldn’t tell the animal’s sex. [I read later that females and the young live in groups, the adult males usually alone—perfectly suitable accommodations of consciousness for raccoons!] “Coons can’t run fast,” Floyd told us, “and big dogs will attack ‘em if they catch them out in the open in the daytime. But that coon could kill even a big dog, if it got cornered.” He added that if we heard a loud thudding noise on the roof tonight, it meant that an animal had managed to dislodge the stone cap on the chimney. And Floyd had been right: The raccoon stayed in the tree until dusk, then descended and ambled into the woods in back of the house.³

Jane held Session 900 for Chapter 5 of Dreams, in Volume 1, some 20 months ago. In Note 1 for that session I described a most vivid dream experience—one in which, Seth told me in the session itself, I had viewed the many-faceted light of my own being and of the universe. Participating in that event had been our friend, Floyd Waterman. Floyd is an extremely generous and caring individual who has helped us many times over the years; he’s the contractor who converted half of our double garage for the hill house into Jane’s writing room.² Jane and I have each shared a number of psychic experiences with him.

[...] On a summer evening after dusk in the dream, I went for a walk with Floyd Waterman (I’ll call him), a ‘real’ friend from Elmira who was visiting me. Floyd is a contractor.

“As Floyd and I cut across the court I saw that the Brenner’s lawn was despoiled with a mixture of animal and industrial waste, like pollution. ‘What’s that?’ I exclaimed to Floyd, as I saw a large dark shape near the hickory tree. [...]

“Floyd Waterman represents someone who has a connection with living animals in the present [on his farm], and connects the times in the dream, since he also is in the construction business and does carpentry work —and the man who owned the deer was a carpenter. Rob’s also had other dreams involving Floyd and animals. [...]

“My friend, Floyd Waterman (I’ll call him), and I were in a five-and-ten-cent store in Sayre, my old hometown. [...] Floyd had to take the test first, stepping into a little booth such as a cashier might use. [...]

4. It took me a while to realize that Seth had made a most interesting statement here—implying that somehow I’d picked up Floyd’s worries about his age and virility. Floyd, Jane, and I are good friends, and he’s well acquainted with our work. [...]

In that dream your worries were initially reflected—worries that your friend Floyd has also encountered on his own about virility and age,⁴ so you saw the two of you in a five-and-ten-cent store, simply representing the world of commerce, where items are sold: Did you still have a value in that world? [...]

[...] “Floyd” said he’d be here this afternoon. [...]

[...] “I gave up on that last summer, when Floyd (Waterman) and I and the others couldn’t talk you into it—”

2. Six months ago, I described how Floyd Waterman had helped me rebuild a narrow old straight chair for Jane, and equip it with casters, so that I could more easily steer her into certain parts of the hill house. [...]

Within a few days, after I’d taken certain measurements from Jane while she was sitting down, our friend Floyd Waterman [who is a contractor] helped me cut down an old-fashioned straight chair and equip it with small wheels. [...]