“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Seth did mention Rob’s vision in the next (thirteenth) session on January 6, 1964. We began this one with the Ouija board. Rob said, aloud: “Seth, can you tell me anything about the vision I had two nights ago?”

Now, as Seth, I shoved the board aside and began to dictate:

Rob laughed at the remark about my subconscious, but instead of giving us our rest period, Seth went on for a moment:

Here, we took our break. Rob always enjoyed Seth’s sense of humor, and he was still smiling at the last remark when I came out of trance. “He called me Joseph again,” he said.

“Serves you right,” I said, grinning. Seth referred to me as Ruburt and to Rob as Joseph, saying that these were our entity names. The entity is the whole self who experiences many reincarnations. I didn’t like either name too well, so we used to joke about them. We didn’t have time to say much, however, because Seth came back in about ten minutes. During the break, Rob had made a remark about solidified emotion, and Seth began by saying:

This session actually lasted from 9:00 P.M. until midnight, so only excerpts have been given here. The material on mental enzymes intrigued us. Looking back, we can see what a chore it must have been for Seth to introduce us to ideas that were very basic — to him — and quite new to us. Much later, he was to give some excellent material on the nature of physical matter and its “mental” components. But at the time of this session, he told us all we could understand, while he began slowly to build up the necessary background and concepts.

There was a constant battle, though, as some of our results ran full tilt into my intellectual ideas. In the beginning, I took it for granted that Seth was a subconscious fantasy, personified, because I simply couldn’t accept the possibility of “spirits” or, for that matter, life after death. Then, after it became obvious that the Seth sessions were going to continue, we kept constant check on my personality characteristics and went to a psychologist — as any sane, red-blooded American would do under such circumstances in those days. Seth seemed far more mature and well-balanced than the psychologist, so finally I stopped worrying. Besides, my personality showed no adverse signs of instability. If anything, I was more competent in handling physical affairs. This is not to say that the experience did not cause certain strains and stresses that could accompany any worthwhile venture in an entirely new field.

After staring into the bottle, I began talking with Rob in the living room. I mentioned being able to put myself in a dissociated state at the gallery when things got sticky and said that this saved lots of effort on my part. As I spoke, my voice seemed to get hoarse and husky. I laughed and commented that I hoped Seth wasn’t going to start using my voice whenever he wanted to.

I was too amazed to speak. Seth had barely begun any discussion of the dream-state realities and I was at a complete loss. Both men were smiling as they stared at me. Obviously, they weren’t intruders in the usual sense, and they were not at all threatening. Their presence was a complete impossibility, yet I couldn’t deny the evidence of my senses.