“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The television camera lights were warm on my face. My husband, Rob, and I sat with Sonja Carlson and Jack Cole, who were interviewing us on the Boston “Today’s Woman Show” on television station WBZ. It was 10 A.M. on the last day of our first tour to promote my book, The Seth Material. This was our fifth television show. I tried to look composed and confident, though I still found it difficult to face strangers so early in the day, much less the world at large — particularly when I was expected to explain my own psychic experiences and the philosophical concepts of The Seth Material.

As he began the interview, Jack Cole told the unseen audience that I was a medium who spoke for a personality called Seth. He emphasized that my presence on the show didn’t necessarily mean that he or Sonja accepted Seth’s independent existence. I smiled, somewhat ruefully. Many people feel duty-bound to express skepticism as if it were an automatic badge of honor and intellectual superiority. I’d done the same thing in the past, so I could understand the attitude.

A few day’s later, I received a long distance call at home from a woman who told me that Seth’s appearance on the “Today’s Woman Show” convinced her of life after death, though she had never believed in it before. She also said that listening to Seth had been the most profound religious experience of her life, although Seth had not talked in specific religious terms. Since then, we have received many calls, letters and visits from people who saw that show. They were astonished by the program, yet in a strange way, so was I. It taught me several things.

I was disappointed that I wasn’t able to see the television program, because I’ve never seen myself as Seth in trance except in a few photographs. Seth manifests through me, addressing himself to others who feel the impact of his personality, but I can’t see this as they do from the outside, objectively. To observers, Seth’s otherness from me is apparent in the way the open eyes are used, in the gestures and rearrangement of facial patterns. We simply use the body in a different way.

I don’t “become” Seth. Instead, I seem to bask in what he is, or in his presence, if you prefer. Sometimes I am distantly aware that my facial muscles are being rearranged as they mirror Seth’s emotions rather than mine. But then, for me, the reality of the room vanishes. Though my eyes are wide open, it is Seth who looks out and smiles at Rob; Seth who speaks through my lips, discussing the nature of reality and existence from the viewpoint of someone not confined to the three-dimensional world.