“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(We began by sitting at a small table in our living room. We had covered the table with a dark material. Our kitchen opens off the living room, so we closed the blinds in both rooms, and pulled the curtains over them. Not knowing just how to go about a seance, we had a small red electric Christmas candle on. Our rooms have white walls also, so we could still see fairly well once our eyes became adjusted.

(I asked Jane to lay her wedding ring on the table. The three of us joined hands around the ring. Sitting quietly in the dim light, staring at the ring, I soon realized that with a nudge or two from the imagination the unwary observer might not have too much trouble seeing what he wanted to.

(Then Jane suddenly announced in a firm, clear voice: “Watch the hand.” It was a command, and I knew Seth was with us. Jane felt her left hand immediately grow cold. I asked no more questions, except rarely. Seth-Jane talked constantly from then on. Jane, Bill and I hunched over the table, over the left hand. The ring had slipped out of it by now.

(“And now the wrist—see how it thickens and turns white?” Jane’s wrist did thicken. She sat with the wrist of her left hand pressed to the table top. She wore a black sweater with the sleeves pushed halfway up her forearms. The cold white light spread up over the thickening wrist, up the forearm to the sweater. Seth was smug and sardonic at the same time. “You didn’t think I could do it, did you my lovelies? But you have no idea of what you’re asking, of how difficult it is…”

(Now, while Jane still sat with her left wrist pressed to the table, her hand, turning white in part again, rose several inches [perhaps three by my estimate] up from the table. My hands were held by Jane on my left and Bill on my right, but Bill passed his free right hand beneath Jane’s hand to see that it was actually rising and was not an illusion. [Was Jane’s elbow dropping, so the hand rose up? I do not know.] But laughing, Seth told us plainly that when we had attained more proficiency, he would materialize a fully independent hand for us. He explained that he drew on all three of us for the psychic energy necessary to do this.

(Jane’s hand returned to the table and resumed again its pawlike shape. “Now,” Seth said to me, “very carefully, reach out and touch the hand. I want you to carefully touch it so that you will see what it is like.” I touched my fingertips to Jane’s palm. The hand, pawlike, clublike, felt very cold to me, wet and clammy, and the skin had a bumpy feeling that I was not used to in Jane’s hand.

(We had turned no lights on during break. Now Seth rather imperiously commanded us to move our little table over a few feet so that it faced the doorway to our bathroom. Looking back, Jane, Bill, and I recall with some humor that we docilely followed Seth’s every order. The three of us sat shoulder to shoulder, staring into the bath, which is large and tiled with white. We were hoping to see a materialization of some kind in the open doorway, since we had discussed this at break.

(“Now,” Seth said, “look into the mirror.” The red candle was still on, though hidden behind the curtains. Since the mirror is tall and narrow, we had to crowd in close on three sides of the little table, in order to see our reflections. But we could pick them out. Jane sat in the middle. Her lips were very close to my ear as she talked now; I could hear and feel each breath she took, each swallow she took; her voice dropped considerably in volume and I had the sensation that she was indeed speaking for someone else.