“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I don’t care for the term “channeling,” since I think it too all-inclusive and already trite. However, I liked both Jim’s ideas of my doing the Preface for Jane’s book, and of publishing a photo of her. And Laurel Lee Davies, the young lady who’s now helping me carry on my publishing activities, at once intuitively picked out from my files the one right photograph of Jane to us for Seth, Dreams … Jane’s father, Delmer Roberts, took the snapshot when she was on vacation with him in Baja, California in 1951. She was twenty-two years old. Jane and I didn’t meet until 1954. That little picture, then, was taken some twelve years before she began “coming through” with the Seth material. Yet, I find in it all of the ingredients that made up the Jane I knew — her great beauty, personality and creativity, her love of manipulating within her physical environment; I see her “steering herself” toward extraordinary accomplishments.

October 10, 1984. Both of us had jobs at the large hospital in my home town of Sayre, Pa., eighteen miles southeast of Elmira, N.Y. The setting and the buildings weren’t like those of the “real” hospital in Sayre, though. It was a gorgeous summer day. Jane was much younger than she’d been when she died at the age of fifty-five. She still had her long jet-black hair, slim active figure and exuberant personality. I could have been my own age, sixty-five. We relaxed upon a large, sloping, very green lawn beside a brick hospital building that was several stories high. Then with great surprise I saw that on top of the near end of the building there sat an old, flat-sided, two-story house with steep roofs, weathered a drab gray and with all of its windows shuttered. Caught in one shutter was a filmy pink garment like a negligee, fluttering in the breeze. Curiously, Jane and I stared up at the house perched so incongruously there, and we talked about trying to get up into it to see what it was like inside.

Valerie’s material raises as many questions as it gives answers for, of course. Are her messages really from Jane, or is she “only” telepathically picking up from me what I want to hear, and flashing it back to me from her trance states — as communications from Jane? An unbelieving scientist would say that Valerie is hardly in touch with a discarnate Jane, since science doesn’t accept survival of death. Nor would the idea of reaching Jane’s world view be considered, or telepathy from me, for both of those concepts are scientifically unacceptable. The most parsimonious view — the simplest, stingiest one — would be that through studying the Seth Material Valerie subconsciously divines the replies I want from my dead wife, and in all subjective innocence comes through with her trance messages for me, to fit my own stubborn belief in Jane’s survival.

Indeed. A commitment is required upon my part in this case: I think that Valerie’s message for me is from Jane. A possible qualification of that belief can be that the material is interwound with data Valerie picked up from Jane’s world view, where Jane wouldn’t have necessarily been involved — only the body of her personalized and emotional experience in physical life. I cannot objectively prove either of those pro-positions. Yet I have my own intuitive proof, because I strongly feel that the contents of Valerie’s message fit very well both the physical and the nonphysical Jane Roberts.

[...] Was it symbolically true or practically true or both? When it was typed, we both read it over several times. [...]

Why then do you [mankind in general] insist that an inner experience such as telepathy or premonition does not exist because you cannot hold it in both hands? [...]

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

[...] One reason for the success of our communications is the peculiar abilities in both of you and the interaction between them — and the use you let me make of them. [...]

In the cats’ deaths, both inherited the peculiar illness, which was a virus, that killed them. [...] (We’d obtained both kittens from the janitor at the art gallery. Both had the same mother.)

[...] The session continued until nearly 1:00 A.M. The rest of it went into an analysis of the previous ten years, and was directed at both of us. All of this was fascinating, incidentally, and full of psychological insight that greatly helped us both.

[...] She also informed Rob that I could contact the deceased for their living relatives if I wanted to, emphasizing that a good deal of trial and error would be involved as both of us learned to use our psychic abilities.

[...] We were both completely unacquainted with such ideas, yet, intuitively, we accepted them. [...]

[...] We had had no instances of clairvoyance or any evidential material except for that provided in the early séance, and we had both decided that we weren’t ready to try anything like that again for some time.

“Both ideas could be part of the whole solution,” Rob said. [...]

Time and space are both camouflage patterns. [...]

[...] Besides this, both of us began to experiment with the first inner sense on the basis of the information we received that night. [...]

This time we both stopped in dismay. [...]

It was Miss Cunningham’s discovery that she needed operations on both eyes that caused this deeper decision. [...]

Both of us had been wondering about the crisis Seth had mentioned for Miss Cunningham on April 15. [...]

(In an earlier session, Seth said that while on vacation in Maine, we both unwittingly created two images — versions of ourselves — and then reacted to them. [...]

[...] And, of course, Rob and I both began to experiment with the inner senses. [...]

[...] Jane and I were both surprised at the amount of material delivered in forty-five minutes; the time seemed to fly. [...]

[...] Also, you might visit the state of sorrow and joy almost simultaneously and experience both emotions in heightened form because of the almost immediate contrast. [...]

[...] That is, both of you have pursued separate abilities because of the bent of your particular personalities.

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

[...] And yet, inside our small, lighted living room, we both felt we were making important inroads, gaining invaluable insights and finding a point of sanity amid a chaotic world.

[...] I had the odd feeling that the sensation was related both to the subject of conversation, and to some kind of message or communication I felt within me.

[...] You can see how handicapped we both are because of the difficulties involved in trying to explain inner data in terms of outer data. [...]

Since you are both tired, I will end the session. [...]