“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The pointer spelled out LOREN, THE MAN WAS A MONK ON A PILGRIMAGE.

“My brother, Loren? Where was he traveling to?”

HE WAS ON HIS WAY TO THE HOLY LANDS. HIS SHOES HAD BEEN STOLEN AS HE SLEPT. THE BUILDINGS YOU SAW WERE NOT PYRAMIDS BUT THE RUINS OF MONASTERIES IN THE DISTANCE.

“In what land was this?” Rob asked.

The pointer replied: ASIA WAS WHERE YOU SAW HIM, THOUGH HE WAS IN MANY OTHER PLACES, TRAVELING IN HIS MIDDLE YEARS, DOING PENANCE FOR HIS SINS ACCORDING TO THE CUSTOMS OF THE AGE.

“Was I alive then?” Rob asked.

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.

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.

By now, we were both convinced that the human mind or consciousness had abilities and methods of perception far beyond those we had thought possible. If this was the case, then my consciousness possessed these potentials, and I was determined to discover their nature and extent. I never considered them supernormal, or rather, supernatural. On the other hand, it never occurred to me that there was any other way to study consciousness except by studying my own — a journey into subjectivity seemed, and still seems, as valid as a journey into objectivity.

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.

One episode in particular is funny in retrospect — looking back it was certainly undisciplined — but at least it was not overshadowed by superstitious fears about demons; and it led to the episode with which I will close the first portion of this book. The event was a deep trance experience into which I blundered. A second experience convinced me of the high validity of dream existence, for in it a dream was split open while I watched.

One night while Rob was busy in the studio, I decided to experiment with a crystal ball. Since I didn’t have one, I substituted a lovely blue bottle which was filled with water and into which I stared intently for a good half hour. Just as I finished, Rob came out to see what I was up to. According to him, I had been too quiet.

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.

As nearly as I can recall, it was then that I began to feel strange — as if something were going to happen. I put the feeling down as due to imagination. Almost at once, I felt drowsy and sat in the rocker — without rocking. My eyelids were very heavy; my head slumped sideways. I could hardly keep awake, but my senses were extremely acute; I could hear every sound in the house.

Rob asked me what was wrong. I answered that I felt odd and unlike myself. My body then was very light — weightless to me, anyway. I wasn’t conscious of any muscular weight or pressure at all. My arms and shoulders felt like water or air. Rob told me to get up. He was beginning to look worried. But I could hardly rise from the chair. He had to help me to the couch. I didn’t feel physical enough to move.

I could tell that I was heading into a very deep trance state. On the one hand, I was tempted to go along with it, since I was supposed to be experimenting. Along the way I was able to maintain my present state, without going deeper, but I didn’t know how to snap out of the present state.

Rob made coffee for me. I didn’t believe I could lift the cup. When I finally did, my motions were extremely slow, as in a slow-motion motion picture. Rob made me drink two cups of coffee. He had me stand with my head out of the kitchen window in the cold night air, but nothing seemed to help. I just seemed to be in a weightless body in which I had little interest. By now I was rather frightened, yet I thought that I could snap out of it if I really exerted all of my will power — or knew how.

Rob thought the concentration of writing a statement of how I felt would help. Instead, my efforts showed what a crazy state I was in. My handwriting just wasn’t my own. Hardly any pressure was exerted on the pen. The writing was wavery, small and grew progressively smaller. The prose expression was nothing like mine; it was very childish. Thoughts or messages poured to mind, and I wrote them down in this weird (unedited) script:

I was sitting at my desk when I began to feel funny. I don’t know how. Then I sat in another chair and felt funnier. My hands felt very light and so did my shoulders. Light, then as if they were not there at all.

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.

Rob asked me to read the small print on the inside of a match cover and a few lines from a book — all held out much farther than I could usually read — and I was able to do this quickly and without effort. My sight was much better than it is normally.

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.

The next thing I knew, I was dreaming that two men stood by the bed, talking to me. They wore ordinary clothing, slacks and sports jackets. Just then a loud noise awakened me. I sprang to a sitting position, instantly alert.

Astonished, I saw the two men still standing there. Surely, I thought, this was some trick of perception! I was still dreaming and didn’t realize it, perhaps. But I pinched myself and rubbed my eyes. Then, quickly, I closed my eyes and reopened them. The men were still there! As far as I could tell, they were perfectly solid and fully three-dimensional. There was nothing ghostly about them.

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.

Finally, I just pulled the bedcovers up to my chin and sat there, staring back at them. The next moment, they began to disappear before my startled eyes, from the outside edges as if the air was consuming them. If their appearance surprised me, this bit-by-bit disappearance was even more startling.

As they vanished, I felt the strangest sense of loss. I ‘knew’ that the men were as real as I was, and that I had glimpsed some other dimension of reality quite as valid as the one I knew. Through all of this, I hadn’t thought to disturb Rob, who was sleeping soundly beside me. My attention was utterly focused on the events. Now, turning toward him, I remembered the noise that had awakened me. Hadn’t it awakened him? Had there ever been a noise?

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.