“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.

For a moment I was appalled. All kinds of doubts filled my mind. I hadn’t held a regular Seth session since the tour. Suppose the lights bothered me or the trance wasn’t deep enough? I had a horror, too, of putting on any kind of display. Regular Seth sessions in the privacy of our living room were one thing. Going into trance on television was something else again. “Oh, Seth,” I said mentally, in consternation.

When I came out of trance, Rob was smiling, Jack and Sonja looked dazed, the camera crew were staring at me and the program was over. “Seth was great,” Rob said to me. I was overwhelmed with relief. It was over, then; Seth had come through on television. Hadn’t I alternately hoped that he would and been reluctant at the same time?

After the program, Sonja said that the character analysis given along with the reading described her beautifully. She also told us that she had used both color and fabric to communicate with children on an educational television program — a fact unknown to us.

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.

You could say, if you wanted to, that Seth intruded himself from some unconscious dimension into my conscious life, yet now he is such a part of my professional and personal experience that much of my time is spent studying and interpreting his theories. His appearance on television seems to represent a further step in his “objectification,” which is to me, an astonishing one.