“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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?

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.

During the next days, I regained my positive frame of mind. Several times, flashes of concepts came to me while I was house-cleaning — sudden intrusive patterns of thought accompanied by a feeling of intellectual and emotional illumination. I felt at these times as if new information was being “popped into my head,” or rather, into my whole being. And I knew that, mentally, I only retained a part of it. These experiences made me accept the telepathy episode in the last session, though I still wasn’t sure of the agent involved.

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,

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.

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.

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.

“Well, okay, ever onward,” I said, because despite it all, I felt it foolish to look a gift horse in the mouth. I also felt that in each of us there is a deep connection with “magical” elements of our nature—magical in that they rise like poetic inspiration, filling the mundane world with a special living, personal meaning. To refuse such “gifts” from the “gods” might be far more dangerous than accepting them. These thoughts were far beneath my conscious ones, though. Only now, writing this book, did I recall entertaining them.

In a dream, I have said, you can experience many days while no corresponding amount of physical time passes. It seems as if you travel very far in the flicker of an eyelash. Now, condensed time is the time felt by the entity, while any of its given personalities live on a plane of physical materialization. To go into this further, many have said that life was a dream. They were true to the facts in one regard, yet far afield as far as the main issue is concerned.