“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

It might be interesting to note that with the rather generous average of 3 hours per session, for 43 sessions, the material in this book was collected in about 129 hours. (This includes a few sessions other than the Seth material.) There are 168 hours in a week.

Unless otherwise indicated in the early sessions, the pointer gave yes and no answers by moving to the appropriate word printed on the board, rather than by spelling out the answer letter by letter. Also in the first few sessions the pointer very often indicated the word yes between each word of the message being received. For ease in reading this word has been eliminated when so used, without changing in any way the content or intent of the material received. Everything else, misspellings included, is presented just as received, and is taken from my handwritten transcripts of the actual sessions.

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.

From the very beginning we kept detailed notes of the sessions, even when we were writing down strings of meaningless letters. Early in November/63 we had several sessions in which we received only gibberish, and rather lost interest. On the night of November 26 we tried once again however, and this time among the random letters were a few words and phrases; enough to make us try again on the night of December 2/63. And from that session on the material began to flow.

As for the question of distortions in the material, and the obvious contradictions in the early sessions as far as dates, etc., are concerned: The reasons for these are dealt with by Seth as the material unfolds. One by one these problems are disappearing. We now seem able to clear up any such discrepancies by referring back to them, if we choose to, and have done so a few times. But here again time is a factor. As Seth has often said, the material will furnish its own evidence, more and more emphatically as time goes on.