“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

During the interview Jack asked me if Seth would come through. I replied that it was up to Seth. Actually, since I hadn’t gone into trance on any other programs, I doubted I would now. Instead, Jack began to play a taped Seth session. As I heard those deep resonant tones of his, I knew that Seth was present.

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?

“No. I feel fine. I always come out of trance easily. I’d love a bun and some coffee, though. Now I’m starved.”

A small group surrounded us — the producer and assistant producer, Jack, Sonja and the camera men. I looked at Rob with a touch of dismay because while I’d reassured Jack that everything was quite normal, actually something was different this time: I felt as if I’d been in a plane going incredibly fast, only to be yanked suddenly to a halt. Such a tremendous amount of energy surged through me that I didn’t know what to do. For a moment it sent me reeling, and Jack caught my arm. This only embarrassed me further. I could feel my cheeks flush. I always tried to behave very sensibly to show that a trance was not a strange but a very natural phenomenon, and so my momentary stagger caught me by surprise. Rob was beside me in a moment, and I explained how I felt. A taxi was already waiting to take us to our next show, a radio program. I grabbed my bun and coffee and took them with me.

What actually happened while I was in trance? Jack and Sonja described some of the session to me in our brief conversation afterward, and Rob filled me in as we rushed to the next program.

Above all, it deepened my trust in Seth and in his psychological insight and impressed me once again with the remarkable abilities of the inner intuitive self, for it is this part of me that makes communication with Seth possible. For another thing, because of the program format the trance was cut short, and this gave me the opportunity to study the trance phenomenon from a different angle.

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.

While I’m writing this book in the three-dimensional world, for example, the source material for it comes from the other side of consciousness — that dimension that is revealed to us in dreams, inspiration, trance states and creativity. This book is about Seth, dreams and “astral projection” — all aspects of a different kind of consciousness than the objective one with which we are usually occupied.

For this reason alone, I would like to believe that his abilities were mine, that in the trance state, my own latent talents were operating without obstruction, freed from the normal hang-ups and distractions that annoy us all and hamper our development. I would like to think that for a few short hours a week, at least, I was operating at optimum capacity — that Seth’s energy and knowledge were really mine. Lovely thought, and possibly true to some extent.