“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

This was to be the first time Seth really spoke to anyone else. I was half reluctant to hold a session and half curious as to how Seth would handle other people. I was also quite nervous. The session was actually a breakthrough in many respects, as these excerpts will show. I’m also including some of Rob’s preliminary notes.

Mark sat there, considerably startled. I was in trance, of course, but, knowing him, I can well imagine how he must have stared at me as I strode back and forth speaking in that deep Seth voice and talking to Rob in such a manner. When Rob explained briefly about Seth before the session, he’d asked Mark questions he’d like answered. Mark said that he was interested in the connection between consciousness and evolution. Now, almost immediately, Seth said:

“Seth answered each question I had the minute it came to mind,” he said. “Rob gave me a piece of paper. I intended to write questions down as I thought of them, but I never got the chance to do it. He answered them in order.” He shook his head. “Seth did. Or you did. Somebody did. I’ve never heard or seen anything like this!”

“The material was all on related subjects,” Rob said. “Could that explain it?”

Rob laughed. “Like me, in the Denmark life you told me about?”

Now it was Mark’s turn to laugh. Rob and I had never met his wife. Nor was he a close friend, merely a good acquaintance who lived out of town and visited Elmira only when his business required it, about once every six weeks.

“When did this happen?” Rob asked. He was trying to lead Seth on again. Mark just looked from one of us to the other.

“Wait. Let’s get the spelling on that,” Rob said, and Seth nicely spelled it out.

The session continued. I had long forgotten that we had a visitor. My previous nervousness was like a dream. I was aware of nothing except of a great supporting energy and, someplace far off, the room in which my body walked. Mark sat there fascinated, Rob told me later, his salesman’s smile replaced by bewilderment and determination. He was to attend many other sessions. Whether or not he and Seth were friends in a past life, they became good friends in this one. Some excellent evidential material was to be obtained through sessions with Mark several years later. He was to recall Seth’s warning to cut down on drinking because of his predisposition to gout; he came down with gouty arthritis.

It was midnight before the session ended. After it was over, and our salesman friend left for his motel in a nearby town, Seth came through with a few personal remarks for Rob. We had already gone into the bedroom when I felt drawn to go out into the front room to my desk. Standing there, silently, I felt Seth near. My mind was a whirl. I knew that I felt that Seth was near, but, intellectually, I was full of questions. Had Seth really read Mark’s mind, or had Mark just wanted that to happen and convinced himself that it had? Did I feel Seth, or was I indulging in fantasies of a highly dangerous nature?

Rob, wondering where I had gone, suddenly stood beside me. Already in trance, I guestured to the paper and Seth began to speak:

“You’re just running yourself down when you think thoughts like that,” Rob said, when I told him.

“Do you think Seth is deceptive?” Rob asked. “If you do, you should quit the whole thing.”

“But then, you’d hide it all from yourself,” Rob objected. “You’d never suspect.”

“Why can’t you just take Mark’s word for it?” Rob said.

In this particular period, we had Seth and the Seth Material only — twenty-six sessions — and thus far, no evidential material at all; there was nothing to go on except our experience and faith in ourselves. I’d always trusted myself as a writer. As a psychic, I felt on very shaky ground for a while. Yet Rob always managed to help me see things in perspective, and this time, he again helped me maintain faith in myself and my abilities.

Rob felt my attitude was rigid, and it was, of course. Yet, I’d made some progress. In the twenty-seventh session, February 19, 1964, Seth told us we could dispense with the Ouija board completely. Up to that time we’d used it to open sessions. He said,

Rob smiled, amused by Seth’s rather cavalier advice to keep the board. It belonged to our landlord.

“Does this apply to both of us, or just to Jane?” Rob asked.

“Mark’s idea?” Rob asked.

“Yes,” Rob said.

(Rob’s notes: I had to ask Jane to repeat the last few words of the above paragraph. As soon as I did, a startling thing happened. Jane-Seth began to talk in a very loud and exceptionally vibrant voice, as if an extra charge of energy was suddenly made available. This strong voice persisted, though it did drop some in volume as the session continued.)

The session went on as Seth gave Rob some excellent psychological insights into his own behavior, and tied this is with early experience in this life, and with relationships with his present family in past life existences. The strong voice continued, and once during a break, Rob asked me how I felt. “Like a full sail, filled with energy, carried on, full blast,” I said.

“I though you didn’t think he was a ghost?” Rob said, grinning.

“Well it does have humorous aspects,” Rob said. “I could hardly keep a straight face, hearing Seth make the suggestions and knowing ahead of time what you’d say. He knew too — it was funny.”

But we spent the weekend rearranging furniture. Rob stacked some bookcases, bought vertical dowels for the top, and arranged the whole affair in front of the door so that we had an inside entry hall. We used the bookcases for the books on psychic phenomena that we were beginning to collect and started some potted philodendron vines between the dowels. The minute the bookcase was in place, I felt more at ease. We’ve changed its location several times but never removed it. Today the vines go to the ceiling. I know now that if it hadn’t been for this divider, we would have moved long ago. Just the same, with the attitude I had at the time, I’m glad I didn’t know about the letter that was to arrive the next day.

About three weeks previously, Rob had written to a psychologist interested in reincarnation. He enclosed some session copies, mostly dealing with reincarnational material. Two days after the twenty-seventh session, we received a letter from him. He told us that the very fluency of the material suggested that it might come from my subconscious, though it was impossible to tell. (He mentioned the Patience Worth case, with which we were now familiar, as a notable exception.) But he also cautioned that in some circumstances, amateur mediumship could lead to mental problems.

I was determined to go ahead. There was too much to learn for me to stop. Besides, I felt that this was “my thing;” something that came unannounced, suddenly, into my life; something that I could not ignore; that I had to see through or regret my lack of courage for the rest of my life. Rob saw, much more clearly than I did, the connection between psychic experience and my poetry and earlier subjective experience.

“I trust him,” Rob said, simply. “The psychological understanding he’s given me, alone, is terrific.”

Rob laughed about all this after the session. “A terrific lot of new material, really startling, on dream reality and some suggestions about your furniture, all in one night!”

“And now?” Rob asked.

“I knew you’d think of that,” Rob said. But I had nothing to worry about. After “settling us down,” making the few changes that seemed to be of such great help, Seth left all housekeeping problems to me.