“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Because of the Miss Cunningham dream and the “Idea Construction” experience, Rob suggested that I try some experiments in ESP and expansion of consciousness and do a book on the results — negative or positive. Those of you who read my two other books in this field know that the experiments were astonishingly successful and led, through the Ouija board, to our first contact with Seth.

“This thing will never work,” I said.
“We must be out of our minds,”
But we weren’t, at least not yet.
The cat smiled but didn’t say anything.

Actually, the board first gave a few messages from a personality called Frank Withers, who insisted that he had known our neighbor, Miss Cunningham. I didn’t take this very seriously at first, but he also said that he knew an elderly woman who worked with me at the local art gallery where I had a part-time job. When questioned, this woman told me that she had known such a man, though he had merely been an acquaintance.

This was enough to send me to Miss Cunningham’s apartment, hoping to bring up the name in conversation. (I wasn’t about to tell anyone about the Ouija board messages.) It struck me odd, also, that Miss Cunningham would be in any way connected with our Ouija activities. This tie-in immediately reminded me of the July dream, of course.

As the days passed, I was nervously aware of her, wandering through the hallways, and made it a point to look in on her now and then. But we were so taken up with our own affairs that I saw her infrequently.

It was a strange time. The assassination of JFK took place just after our sessions began. The familiar physical world did not seem to be a very secure place. The old ways of thought were bringing appalling fruits. An uneasy December followed — bitter and dreary and discouraging on the national scene — and locally the weather was dark, with snow piled high. And yet, inside our small, lighted living room, we both felt we were making important inroads, gaining invaluable insights and finding a point of sanity amid a chaotic world.

In the meantime, we held our board sessions twice a week. By the time I returned from the art gallery on those winter afternoons, it was already dark. After supper, I did the dishes and worked on my poetry for an hour, and then Rob got out the board. Often these sessions lasted until midnight. Rob took verbatim notes from the beginning. Most of the first ten sessions dealt with reincarnation and included some fascinating material on Rob’s family.

By now, we were also trying other experiments for my book, which I was writing during the mornings. And in our 12th Session Seth gave what I still think of as a cornerstone that served as a preliminary framework upon which the rest of The Seth Material would be built. I have quoted parts of it in other books, yet the analogy Seth gave us is such an excellent introduction to the interior universe and to his ideas that it is almost indispensable. Each time I read it, I gain new insights.

I hope you see what I have done here. I have initiated the idea of motion, for true transparency is not the ability to see through but to move through. This is what I mean by fifth dimension. Now remove the structure of the wires and cubes. Things behave as if the wires and cubes were there, but these are only constructions necessary, even to those on my plane, in order to make this comprehensible to our faculties, the faculties of any entity.

We merely construct imaginary lines to walk upon. So real are the wall constructions of your room that you would freeze in the winter time without them, yet there is no room and no walls. So, in a like manner, the wires that we constructed are real to us in the universe, although … to me, the walls are transparent. So are the wires that we constructed to make our point about the fifth dimension, but for all practical purposes, we must behave as if the wires were there …

Again, if you will consider our maze of wires, I will ask you to imagine them filling up everything that is, with your plane and my plane like two small birds nests in the netlike fabric of some gigantic tree … Consider, for example, that these wires are also mobile, constantly trembling and also alive, in that they not only carry the stuff of the universe but are themselves projections of this stuff, and you will see how difficult it is to explain. Nor can I blame you for growing tired when after asking you to imagine this strange structure, I then insist that you tear it apart, for it is no more actually seen or touched than is the buzzing of a million invisible bees.

During all of this time, Rob and I were having our first experiences with mobility of consciousness. What else could consciousness do? What could mine do? The questions filled me with wonder, and we tried all kinds of experiments.

One of the most fascinating was an experiment we tried alone one night. I’m including Rob’s notes of it to give you an idea of the various things we were trying. I’m convinced that this sort of exercise is most valuable in that it helped to shake our consciousness out of its usual focus in objective, ego-oriented reality.

I’m rather embarrassed now by the fact that we turned the lights off, since our sessions and classes are always conducted in normal light. In those days, though, we didn’t know how to proceed, and we had read that such affairs were conducted in near-darkness. Rob and I sat at my wooden table with only a small electric candle lit. After quite some time, I began to see pictures, and as Rob took notes, I spoke aloud in my own voice, describing what I was seeing and experiencing. This was the resulting monologue:

“Yeah … but is it what it is, like Willie our cat is?”