“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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:

These mental enzymes, to go back to them, are solidified feeling, but not in the terms that you usually use … I have said that our imaginary wires that seem to permeate our model universe are alive; and now if you bear with me, I will say that they are mental enzymes or solidified feelings, always in motion, and yet permanent enough to form a more or less consistent framework. You could almost say that mental enzymes become the tentacles that form material — though I do not find that a very pretty phrase …

The sessions had begun on December 2,1963. This was still only the middle of January of 1964. We were trying other experiments on our own, some like the example given earlier, some entirely different. Mornings, I worked on my book. Afternoons were spent at the gallery. If it wasn’t a session night, after dinner and an hour’s poetry, we tried other experiments. Rob spent a good deal of time typing the sessions, as he still does. He couldn’t do much more without cutting down on his own painting hours, so I often did experiments on my own while he was in the studio.

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.

I laughed and said, “Well, there’s nothing to crystal-gazing. All I saw was what you could expect — lights and reflections and things. I guess you can’t win them all, as they say,” and I plunked myself down in our wooden rocker. In the next moment, a fascinating series of events occurred that were to culminate in the third dream-state experience mentioned earlier in this book. I’m going to quote the notes I wrote the following day. In this way, our attitude towards the events at the time becomes obvious.

Quickly, I rushed out of bed and opened the door into the next room. There on the floor, broken beyond repair, was a heavy flowerpot, laying in a pile of dirt and knotted geranium roots. Willie, our cat, had knocked it off the windowsill.