“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(As of now we think it unlikely that we’ll buy either of the houses. We haven’t asked Seth what to do, and do not plan to. There are more “coincidences” involved than those Seth described tonight, none of them consciously known to Jane and me before the Sayre adventure: Mr. Markle is in a nursing home but a few miles from where we live in Elmira, and my mother spent her last days in a similar home less than 15 miles away; one of Mr. Markle’s children lives in Elmira, and is connected with a store Jane and I have visited; Mr. Johnson, of the real estate couple that conducted us about in Sayre, did sign painting and truck lettering as a younger man, as I did; he and I had several mutual acquaintances in Sayre, among them an older artist of some reputation — and now deceased — that we had known in our high school days; and so forth.

1. Jane and I took our drive three weeks ago, on April 7. The town of Sayre is only 18 miles from Elmira, N.Y., where we live now, and it sits in the beautiful Pennsylvania hills between two smaller communities — Athens to the south, and Waverly to the north in New York State. Locally the three are known as “The Valley.” We visit Sayre occasionally. Although it’s close by as far as miles go, for me important aspects of it are far away in terms of years.

The place in question is located within a few blocks of the neighborhood to which my family moved in 1931, as described in Note 1. Since it sits on one of the main streets of Sayre, at a busy corner, I know that I must have passed by it many times in subsequent years; yet I’d never noticed the house as an individual entity until Jane and I walked up to its front door with the Johnsons. When the Johnsons told us who the owners were, I could only reply that I’d heard the name while living in Sayre; the old couple would be contemporary with my mother. Although I couldn’t remember my mother mentioning them, it was at least possible that she’d known them. There could have been links through mutual friends. To some small extent, then, Jane and I could toy with inferences drawn from Seth’s comment that that particular house had represented my mother’s second choice. I could hardly ask her, since she’d died five months ago, but Stella Butts could have known the owners, and been in their home; she could have liked it inordinately …

When Debbie took Jane and me through the Foster Avenue house on February 5, she told us that another couple — who live in Sayre, and whom I’ll call the Steins — had also inspected the property and planned to make an offer for it, while trying at the same time to sell their present home. [...] For instance: When Jane and I “rediscovered” Mr. Markle’s house in Sayre today (February 17), and saw to our considerable surprise that it might still be for sale, we at once visited the Johnsons, who had shown us through it last year. We were then in for another surprise — for the Johnsons are the agents in charge of selling the Steins’ residence in Sayre.

(Then in Sayre, Pennsylvania, this afternoon [Monday the 17th], we found ourselves participating in house-related developments that took us back in time more than nine months.⁹ Jane and I don’t believe in coincidences. We’d considered the Sayre episodes finished last year; yet today the echoes of those earlier events were so prominent that I came to think of them as actual projections from the past into the present, and so into the future, in a most practical manner. [...]

The first (in Sayre), mentioned far earlier in “Unknown” Reality, you thought was definitely sold, and today you discovered that the sale was not that final.¹⁰ As you discussed these issues a rather important main point escaped your minds: The man who owned the first house (Mr. Markle) was a dealer in antiques and precious stones, utterly devoted to his work and engrossed in it, considering it his art. [...]

[...] I dreamed in color that Jane and I had moved back to Sayre, Pennsylvania — my home town — to Mrs. Potter’s old apartment at 317 S. Elmer Avenue. [...] Elmira is only 18 miles from Sayre.

[...] She’s a friend of Luke and Lois Hutter, of Sayre, whom Jane and I knew many years ago. [...] I’d idly speculated with Jane about whether the reacquaintance with the Potters — Lois is Mrs. Potter’s adopted daughter — had any connection with my dream about our moving back to the apartment we’d had in the Potter house in Sayre.)

(It wasn’t until I was ready to leave 330 that I realized I hadn’t asked Seth to comment on my dream of the night before — involving our returning to the Potter apartment-house in Sayre. [...]

[...] Regardless of what you think now, the idea of moving to Sayre should be considered as a very viable probability, for its symbolic content offers additional motive power and strength. [...]

[...] Sayre, PA is 18 miles from Elmira, NY and is my home town. [...]

(As far as the Sayre moving idea goes, I told Jane, I didn’t know what to think or say. [...]

(Seth had used more than half of Monday’s session to discuss our house hunting in connection with Sayre and Foster Avenue. [...]

[...] This is not possessed by the Sayre house, and I recommend against that house regardless of price. [...]

[...] She still looked a bit teary, but at the same time I was sure now that we’d steered away from any probable reality involving Foster Avenue — and perhaps Sayre too, I thought, considering Seth’s material at 10:15 tonight.³

(Jane later told me she felt the street was south of my parents’ home in Sayre—and where I had lived while going to high school. I happened to have a street map of Waverly, Sayre and Athens, and checked it before writing this. [...] The towns adjoin each other: Waverly is in New York, Sayre and Athens in Pennsylvania.)

(“I had a grade-school teacher in Sayre, named Miss Lennon.”

[...] I graduated from high school in Sayre in June 1937, 32 years ago, and have seldom seen any classmates. [...]

[...] He was correct (about the dream of July 7, involving my return to Sayre). [...] The dream involving the old granary is of the same nature as the bookstore (Sayre) dream (as Jane said tonight)—another version of it, reminding you of the kind of nourishment generations of the past received. [...]

(Tonight as we waited for the session to begin I showed Jane my three recent dreams that I was interested in having Seth comment upon: July 7 [Sayre], 17 [reincarnation and Debbie Janney], and 19 [Jane recovering overnight]. [...]

Sayre, a community of about 7500, only 20 miles from Elmira and just across the Pennsylvania border, is my hometown. [...] Laurel and I bought the house in Sayre, just around the corner from the house I grew up in, to get more living and working room. Now each time we make the beautiful drive to Elmira, it’s like moving back in time—just like it used to be when we traveled from Elmira to Sayre. [...]

[...] Sayre was the location, I knew. [...]

Next, Jane quickly went over my recent batch of “Sayre-environment dreams,” as Seth called them. [...]

[...] “In your heart Sayre stands for your childhood,” he said in conclusion, “and to that extent, to you personally, for the childhood of all men. [...]

[...] “Cowboys and Indians” was our gang’s favorite game back in Sayre in the late 1920s, and as we roamed the nearby fields all of us made believe we killed our enemies and/or were killed ourselves. [...]

[...] Joseph was unconsciously aware of the first house [of the two in Sayre], and could have chosen not to drive down that particular street, for example. [...]

[...] It also shows that his desires for a house in Sayre (deeper and stronger) helped bring about certain events: He could have such a house if he wanted one.

5. A note added 10 months later: There were many house ramifications to come, though, concerning not only Mr. Markle’s place in Sayre but some here in Elmira, where Jane and I live. [...]

[...] She said that while speaking as Seth about me, she saw me, within, seated at a table or desk in the front upstairs bedroom of my parents’ home in Sayre, Pennsylvania. [...]

[...] In fact, my father and Dr. Martin were charter members of the Sayre Lions Club, initiated many years ago.

(“Why does my brother Dick want to stop here in Elmira to see us before he goes on down to Sayre to see our mother on Saturday?”)

In color as usual: Another return-to-Sayre dream. [...]

[...] She herself suggested the idea, that I take her to Sayre for the day so she could go to the hospital with my mother, while I returned to work at Artistic Card Company in Elmira. I returned to Sayre at supper time. [...]

(When Jane spent the day with my mother in Sayre, PA on May 16.)

You’re far ahead for leaving Sayre to begin with, regardless of anything else. [...] Jane did push for the Elmira move, feeling instinctively that Sayre was a mistake.

Ruburt’s strong feeling was correct, his compulsive feeling that you should leave Sayre. [...]

You would have had difficulty also had you stayed in Sayre on returning from Florida. [...]

[...] My parents live in Sayre, 50-some miles north of Tunkhannock. [...]

[...] However she absent-mindedly wrote her own ZIP code, for Sayre, PA, after the address—18840. [...]

[...] Another reference to my parents and their home in Sayre, PA. [...]

(The first was that her troubles began in Florida; that it was her fault we left Sayre to join her father in Florida, and that I had not wanted to leave my parents. [I had cried in the car as we drove out of Sayre on the way south, but had, I thought, regarded this as natural enough at the time.] Jane told me that it was her fault we had chased around the country, that her spontaneity had done nothing but get us into trouble. [...]

(Then, Jane continued, still crying, we had returned to Sayre, then Elmira, where I had worked full time for three years, then became very sick for a year. [...]

“In vivid color: I lived in my parents’ house at 704 North Wilbur Avenue, in Sayre, Pennsylvania. [...]

[...] Then to my amazement I saw that the supposed animal was actually the broken remnants of a hollow, life-sized metal statue of a deer that had stood for years in the front yard of a house on Harrison Street, in Sayre, at the other end of town. [...]

On July 23, 1980 — 13 days after I had my dream — the writer of a story in the Elmira Star-Gazette described how the Brenner family won an out-of-court settlement of over $10,000 from the Borough of Sayre and a large store owned by a well-known supermarket chain. [...]

Jane and I were married on December 27, 1954 at the home of my younger brother Loren and his wife Betts in Tunkhannock, PA, some 55 miles south of Sayre. [...] We rented an apartment in Sayre. [...]

Laurel and I have lived in Sayre since early in 2000 while 1730 sits there unoccupied. [...] Laurel makes the 15-mile trip from Sayre much more often than I do: to look the place over, to pick up the junk mail that’s still addressed to us there in spite of the notices I’ve sent out, and to scatter feed for the birds and animals. [...]

[...] She came to Elmira with me after I’d begun working for the greeting-card company, Artistic, to look for a place for us so we could move from Sayre and save the time and expense of commuting 30 miles a day, five days a week. [...]

(I must admit that the moving idea—to Sayre, as Jane has been mentioning lately—hadn’t occurred to me. [...] This attribute is one that I never even thought of in the past, when I’d remark that I wished we’d never left Sayre, and so forth. [...]