“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“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:

Intellectual truth will not make you free, you see, though it is a necessary preliminary. If this were the case, your walls would fall away, since, intellectually, you understand their rather dubious nature. Since feeling is so often the cohesive with which mind builds, it is feeling itself which must be changed if you would find freedom from your particular plane of existence at your particular time. That is, changing feeling will allow you to see variants … These discussions now are, of necessity, of a simple and uncomplicated nature. If I speak in analogies and images, it is because I must relate with the world that is familiar to you.

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.

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.

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.

My senses were still very acute — vision … and hearing. We decided that since I wasn’t having much luck coming out of the trance, we might as well use it to do some experiments. Besides the handwriting, I tried the typewriter. This frightened me a bit further, since I couldn’t exert enough pressure to use the keys. All this time I felt completely weightless, unable to function in the physical world. Because my motions were so strange, Rob had the impression that my limbs were heavy. To me they were as light as air. I felt completely relaxed and still my senses were sharp and clear as never before. I was able to talk to Rob without difficulty, also. When Rob felt my hand, it was wet and floppy, and my body seemed to have no physical resistance at all.

Applied suggestion by Rob would have snapped me out of this state easily, but we didn’t know that at the time. As it was, the condition lasted about three hours, ending only when we went to bed, past midnight. By then I was no longer frightened but merely curious and trying with one part of my consciousness to find out what the other part was up to — and how it went about its business. Finally, I fell asleep, expecting nothing but exhausted slumber for the rest of the night.