“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Rob spent the next Saturday afternoon in his studio, as usual, painting and doing other artwork. It was snowing slightly. I was in the front of the apartment doing the weekly housecleaning. Rob’s mind was on some innocuous chore, now forgotten; he may have been applying gesso ground to a series of panels to be used for paintings. With no transition or advance notice, a vision appeared to him. Although it was not exteriorized, it was clear in detail and very vivid. Like other experiences of this nature, it was intrusive, in that it seemed to have no connection with what he was doing or thinking at the time.

With the vision came its explanation. Rob “knew” that he was seeing the bedroom in which his brother, Dick, had died in a past life in England. We had already been given some information about this previous existence of Dick’s in an earlier Seth session. The vision was so clear that Rob instantly made a quick sketch of it. Later in the day he matted it and put it on the bookcase just before we began our twenty-first session.

It was a fascinating session. Seth told Rob that he’d seen only part of the room, described the rest of it and gave further details about Dick’s English life. The session lasted until 11:15 when Rob, not Seth, got tired, and suggested that we stop for the night. Seth said, Sleepy time is no crime. Now I am no poet, and you know it. Rob laughed, because Seth likes to tease me about my poetry.

Rob’s vision was spontaneous. When he typed up Seth’s material on the first inner sense, though, he tried a simple deliberate experiment. It is one that I now use with my beginning students though then, of course, it was new to us. Here are Rob’s notes:

In the next session, Seth told Rob that he was doing well and should try the exercise often. The session, the twenty-second, was one of our first spontaneous sessions. (At times, I knew I could have a session, for example, but mentally refused. Two sessions a week were more than sufficient, I thought — I was afraid of going into trance at the drop of a hat.)

Still, I thought I’d better tell Rob, so I went back to the studio. “Uh, Seth’s around,” I said.

“No kidding,” Rob said, as if he knew.

“Uh, He says that he always enjoyed the lively art of conversation,” I said. The dish towel was still in my hand. Rob looked at me and laughed.

“Seth,” Rob asked. “Why this method of communication? Why not, say, automatic writing on Jane’s part?”

“Seth,” Rob said, “Jane had several confused dreams in which she seemed to be getting or giving instructions in life readings.”

During all this time the curtains were open. It was not yet quite dark. There were voices and footsteps in the hall, Rob told me later, but I was not bothered at all. In fact, quite without knowing it, I was pacing about, talking as Seth, carrying an unlit cigarette. Finally Seth said, This is a very pleasant little session. For heaven’s sake, Ruburt, get yourself a match. The suspension and suspense is killing me. Will she or won’t she light that cigarette? Please find a match.

Rob laughed and went into the studio for one.

Seth went on to say, jokingly, that I had been blocking information about my own family. Then he said to Rob,

“I can hardly wait,” Rob said.

Seth was very jovial; he and Rob joked back and forth.

“Both of us?” Rob asked, now trying to lead Seth on.

I just snorted when Rob told me about this data after the session. Still, the session impressed me. For one thing, since it was spontaneous rather than planned, I hadn’t been at all nervous. For another, afterwards I felt surrounded by a residue of Seth’s good-humored affection. This feeling was directed at me as well as at Rob, which meant that it wasn’t coming from me. After the session was over, it seemed to follow me out into the kitchen while I finished the dishes.

Our regular session was due the next night and lasted, as usual, from 9:00 until after 11:30. I always want to give this particular session a title: “The Breather and the Dreamer,” because as a result of the session, I wrote a poem with that title — one of three poems inspired by Seth’s discussion that night. The session had quite a different effect on Rob, however, as you’ll see in the next chapter.

Then, just as Rob was about to ask how we could really perceive the inner realities, Seth began to discuss the second inner sense, giving us a valuable tool for our subjective dissections. We later discovered, of course, the “inner senses” and “psychological time” had been discussed under different names in many ancient manuscripts. Rob was really impatient to get the session typed up so that he could study the material and put it to use.

When Rob typed up the session and I read it, I went around in a daze of wonder. Like many other people, I’d distrusted the “inner” self to a considerable degree, believing that it held only repressed primitive emotions and buried, unsavory characteristics. But without it, we couldn’t even get out of bed in the morning or breathe, much less walk across the floor. Now this seems so obvious that it is almost impossible to remember what a revelation it seemed at the time. The next day, the session inspired me to write the following poem.

If the twenty-third session roused me to write the poem, it also impressed Rob deeply enough so that he tried a rather complicated experiment with the inner senses — without letting his conscious mind know what he was up to.