“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

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.

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.