“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

All answers obtained through the Ouija board, and later through Jane’s dictation, are in caps. My questions are in regular type, my comments and descriptions are in parentheses. Occasional corrections the board made in mid-passage are also in parentheses, and can be skipped in the reading. The word “gratis” is used to denote places where, after a pause, the board delivered up further information without being asked to.

To obtain this verbatim record: In the first few sessions Jane and I sat facing each other with the board on our laps, and with a desk close beside me on the right. Jane always kept both hands on the pointer. I kept my left hand there and wrote down questions and answers with my right, using the desk as support. At times my onehanded approach slowed up the pointer’s transmission, but if I touched my right hand to it, it picked up speed. At times it moved very fast. If it moved too fast I either held it back every few words until I had the message down, or wrote with one hand while keeping the other in position.

This rather cumbersome method was greatly simplified as soon as Jane began to dictate the bulk of the sessions. For a time we needed the board to open and close the sessions, but now we do not require it at all. I have complete freedom to take notes. We have also begun to experiment using a tape recorder.

We borrowed the Ouija board from our landlord in the fall of 1963, when by chance he mentioned that he’d bought one but had never obtained any results with it. Jane and I tried the board a few times (sometimes with friends) and at first had no success. Then for a few sessions we received what seemed to be understandable information in the form of various names, initials, dates, places, etc. Nothing we could very easily verify, and some of it was contradictory. Nor could we ever contact the same “source” again.

At first when she began dictating Seth’s answers to my questions, Jane would hear the words within, then repeat them aloud so I could write them down. Now she does not hear the material beforehand, but simply speaks it out, literally and consciously unaware of what she is going to say from one word to the next. She talks on faith or trust, she says, in a way she couldn’t do ordinarily.

Now even when Jane delivers an answer via Seth that may be five typewritten pages long, she never repeats herself, loses track of what she is saying, uses the words “uh,” “er,” etc., or changes in any way what she had said. Time alone would not permit any tinkering with the material. I have taken down each word as she dictated it; nothing has been added, eliminated or changed. It is as though Jane, in giving the material, is reading from an invisible script, so sure and straightforward is her delivery. And her speed of dictation is evidently limited only by the speed at which I can write.

Robert & Jane Butts 458 W. Water St.,