“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Rob was intrigued not only by the material but by Seth himself as he began to manifest his own personality more clearly. My voice had been undergoing changes, becoming more similar to what we now call the Seth voice — deeper, lower, richer in tone than mine and more masculine. But on this particular night, Rob watched, amused, while Seth told him in no uncertain terms what he thought of my experiment — using my own lips to do it! (I’m also including Rob’s notes, as they apply.)

(With a laugh, Rob told me that as Seth, I’d been pacing up and down the room, giving “myself” the dickens about the trance experiment, then switching to the humorous comparison of his voice and mine. I still haven’t stopped smoking, incidentally. Back in those days, I wasn’t about to have a trance personality order me about, even for my own good. Now the habit still lingers, partially as a sign of my independence from Seth and partially as a sign of my dependence upon tobacco …

During break, my voice returned to normal. We sipped some wine. Rob began talking about schizophrenia, and then the session resumed.)

(We took a break here. Rob said that his fingers felt as if they were falling off. It was almost 10:00 P.M. and Seth had been speaking quite rapidly since the beginning of the session at nine o’clock. We started up again in ten minutes, and once more, my voice began to deepen.)

(Still in trance, I turned off the brightest of our two lights, then opened the blinds. Rob said that I stood at the window, looking out at the busy intersection. Fresh snow covered everything. I remembered none of this.)

(For some reason, Rob began to think of Frank Withers. Almost immediately Seth continued,)

“I really felt that someone else was here, that Seth was looking out the window,” Rob said, when the session was over. “It was … nostalgic.” He told me what had happened.

“Wow, and this stuff …” I was reading Rob’s notes. “ ‘A fragment personality can become an entity.’ What’s the soul, then?”

“I thought you didn’t believe that we had one?” Rob said, grinning. “How come all the concern all of a sudden? You want it in black and white, defined? Is that it?”

“Does it?” Rob asked, turning the remark around at me, as he often does. He seemed so sure of himself and of the material; I envied him.

Part of Rob’s confidence came from observation. He could see the change that came over me while I was speaking for Seth, and Seth inspires confidence. Rob liked Seth immediately. The two of them set up an excellent rapport. Through me, Seth related to Rob. Almost from the beginning he was an objectified personality to Rob; a visitor regardless of the unconventional situation; someone in whose ideas Rob was tremendously interested. On the other hand, I only knew what had been said when the trance (or the fun) was over. It was a terrific change for me to suddenly have to rely on someone else — even Rob — to tell me what “I” had been saying for a period of two or three hours.

As Seth continued to explain the inner sense and the unseen reality beneath the objective world that all of us know, I began to understand a little of my situation. And, of course, Rob and I both began to experiment with the inner senses. These experiments gave us first-hand information that was invaluable — especially to me. The next session cleared up several points I had been wondering about and gave us several clues as to how the inner senses could be used. It also includes a brief mention of flying saucers that I didn’t delete because of its obvious general interest. Again, Rob’s notes are inserted whenever they help explain the text.

“How are you this evening, Seth?” Rob asked.

Rob grinned. “Credit my subconscious then. I didn’t sit down and figure it out. The thought just came to me this morning. There was something I wanted to ask you, though. Why do Jane’s eyes appear to be darker and more luminous when she’s delivering your messages? Our cat’s eyes had that same look in the last session.”

“In other words, people from other systems of reality do appear in ours?” Rob asked.

“Would you mind telling us exactly what a plane is?” Rob asked. He expected a fairly brief answer. Instead he got the following:

As a result of the following sessions, for instance, we began “testing” physical reality for its subjective yields. We no longer took for granted the normal day with its succession of moments. Instead, we tried looking at time itself in a new way, practically speaking. We tried to experience it differently, particularly after the nineteenth session and an experiment in self-hypnosis that Rob tried on his own.