“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I picked up the matchbook in a restaurant, Mother Goldsmith’s in Saratoga Springs, NY. Jane has been familiar with the place since childhood, and on our infrequent visits to Saratoga we always stop in. I dated this particular matchbook on the inside when obtaining it—August 1963, which was before these sessions began in December 1963. The book is printed in black on a dim yellow—as Seth calls it—cardboard stock. All the copy on it, except for Nate Goldsmith’s name beneath the caricature of him, is in this dim yellow against the black background.

(It wasn’t until Jane and I began to study the envelope data that we realized it referred to more than one visit to Saratoga on our part. This immediately complicated things. Interpretations became elusive indeed, and part of our knowledge that two visits to Saratoga were involved was subjective only. Had we realized this by the end of the session we would have called Seth back to help out. As it was we didn’t appreciate what had happened until the time came to write these notes. Another complication is that while we cannot pin down all the data, we feel that most of it is quite legitimate.

(I will indicate below where we believe the two Saratoga visits are referred to in the envelope data. The first visit was in August 1963, the second was in the summer of 1964. On both occasions Jane and I were on our way to York Beach, Maine, on vacation; both visits to York Beach played a part in these sessions, and exact dates can be found in appropriate sessions. See Session 9 in Volume 1.

(The connection between the envelope object and our two visits to Mother Goldsmith’s is strong enough, in that Jane and I ate there both years. We saw the same hostess both times also—a girl Jane went to school with in Saratoga. We did not see Nate Goldsmith or his wife on the first visit, and the reasons we did not see either of them on our second visit are given in our data interpretations.

It is this basic feeling about the book and Saratoga that suddenly activated past associations and brought on some identification with his mother. He should remember here that he is not the person who lived in Saratoga now, unless he chooses in a self-limiting way to be so. [...] It shocked him to know that people of the past were reading the book in his present, and seemed to draw him closer to those original associations that caused him to leave Saratoga.

[...] He is afraid, literally, walking the streets of Saratoga, sneaking in and out when he visits. [...]

[...] His book is helping others in Saratoga. [...]

[...] In the Saratoga experience¹ I felt ghostly because there I was a future probability … At certain levels of consciousness, through bypassing direct neurological activity and impact, you can then glimpse other portions of your own probable experience — both in the future and the past.

[...] The difficulty then is a translation in linear terms, hence Ruburt’s trouble in the Saratoga episode.”

“The ghostly, off-center Saratoga adventure bypassed and blurred usual neurological processes, allowing him to slip through. [...]

1. Jane’s description of her “Saratoga experience,” as she calls it, is given in the notes preceding the 685th session. [...]

(Oddly, at least temporarily, Jane and I had overlooked the Saratoga connections involving Jane, Eleanor and Timothy. Certainly it seemed more than coincidence that lots of the great things starting to develop involved people with this common denominator running through their lives—of Saratoga Springs, NY.)

(Timothy Foote arrived by plane from New York City at about noon, and left at 4:30 PM, driving to Saratoga and Skidmore College to see his daughter. [...]

Do not overlook the Saratoga connections of Timothy or Eleanor (Friede): for Ruburt this also provides a sense of continuity that had been lost, and a focus point in his life, a gathering-together point most necessary, that will serve to collect and even regenerate his energies. [...]

[...] The trip to Saratoga was a great success, and Jane did experience many of the ideas, realizations, feelings, etc., detailed above by Seth. Both of us enjoyed seeing the town again immensely, and Jane without doubt has now put Saratoga in proper perspective, both as to her past, present and future. [...]

(“Is it okay to go to Saratoga this weekend?”)

[...] Actually we did go to Saratoga, on June 28-29, 1969.)

[...] Now about our going to Saratoga this weekend?”)

[...] This last Saratoga episode was highly beneficial, even though it frightened Ruburt because he was afraid to use the freedom offered to him. [...] Symbolically Ruburt came to grips with the whole Saratoga problem with his mother and the past.

(Last Saturday morning, June 10, 1 offered to take Jane to the 20th reunion of her high school class in Saratoga. [...]

(The object for the 77th envelope experiment was a copy of an article from The Saratogian, the daily newspaper of Saratoga Springs, NY; it was printed in September, 1950 and was saved by Jane as a souvenir, and also because she wrote it. It describes her election as president of the Day Students Council for Skidmore College, in Saratoga. [...]

[...] Jane wrote it, since she had a part-time job with the newspaper while attending Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. [...]

[...] daughter of… etc., 78 Court, Saratoga.

[...] In this, I was with this same group in Saratoga, on Union Avenue. [...]

[...] I was a baby in my hometown, Saratoga Springs, N.Y. The time was about 1931 to start with. [...]

[...] Jane’s Saratoga experience is involved, too. [...]

(Pause.) It was not in Saratoga. [...]

[...] Jane met Blanche in 1948 in Saratoga Springs, and doesn’t know whether Blanche and Anne knew each other in 1938. [...]

(“How about his recent projections to Saratoga? Are these a good idea at this time?” Saratoga Springs is Jane’s home town.)

(Then I was in Saratoga Springs, I think. [...] And that’s how or why I was in Saratoga. [...]

The impending death also brought forth associations concerning Saratoga, you see. [...] (Saratoga Springs, NY, is Jane’s hometown.)

[...] Jane at break asked me to take down an oil painting of hers that, she said, represented her childhood home on Middle Avenue in Saratoga Springs, New York. [...]

The physical effects in Saratoga at your last trip (summer 1970) were caused by guilt, Ruburt feeling that he was so close and would not visit his mother. [...]

[...] There is a connection between the priest, Father Ryan, and Jane’s playground dreams, and the playground itself in Saratoga Springs. [...] The school was actually housed in a complex of buildings that contained also a church and the headquarters and living area of the particular priestly order serving Saratoga and environs.

[...] Jane’s childhood playground in Saratoga Springs, NY, is described in chapter five, as well as a vivid recurring dream which had this playground for a setting. [...]

[...] It was taken by an older lady friend who was treating her to an outing at a spa just outside of the New York State resort of Saratoga Springs, where Jane lived with her bedridden mother, Marie, and a housekeeper. [...] She wears a print dress that had been given to her in the Roman Catholic orphanage in Troy, some 35 miles from Saratoga Springs; she’d spent the previous 18 months there in the institution while her mother had been hospitalized in another city for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. [...]

[...] With her daughter, the young Marie then returned to her own parents, and the home that the family had rented for a number of years: half of a double dwelling in a poor neighborhood in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Marie began experiencing the early stages of rheumatoid arthritis, but worked as much as possible.

[...] The act of separation finally became conscious and deliberate when I moved to a small community near Saratoga Springs, N.Y. (where Jane lived), to temporarily help an artist-writer friend produce a syndicated “comic” strip. [...]

[...] Her death took place in California just at the time I met Jane in Saratoga Springs, NY, in 1954 in January. [...]

[...] During break Jane said she believed it referred to a brother of Maxine’s. The brother is the same approximate age as Jane, and lived in upstate New York near Saratoga; hence Jane got to know the members of Maxine’s family fairly well even though she seldom saw Maxine herself. [...]

(I made a list of these, added a quick sketch of the horses, and Jane’s Saratoga experience and ecstasy experience, pages 65 and 66; all with the idea of quizzing Seth about them at tonight’s session. [...]

[...] I am pleased with Ruburt’s Saratoga experience also, and wish to let him know that we will see to it that witnesses do not bother him.

[...] Jane is from Saratoga Springs, in upstate New York. [...]

(As we talked, something triggered Jane’s memory of a time in her teens when she’d hiked all the way out to the garage where her grandfather had worked in Saratoga Springs — “way across town.” [...]