“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(We had been speculating about spending our immediately-past lives in Boston, since Seth had hinted at this in the last session. We opened the session by sitting silently at the board, but Jane began to receive Seth even as the pointer spelled out his greeting. She laid the board aside and began to dictate in a normal voice, pacing as usual.)

You never were proper Bostonians. I hope our little session last night wasn’t too much for you.

We have, I believe, used the analogy of air, comparing it to the vitality of the universe in one of our previous sessions. As air is dispelled from the lungs in various forms and used and reused without any loss of power, strength or quantity, so is the vitality of which we speak used in different manners. So does it enter as one thing many times, and so does it emerge as something different many times; and so does it change shape and content, and so does it show many faces and yet never disappears. And as air seems invisible so does this vitality seem invisible, and yet like air this vitality gives shape to every object that you see, and so does it form every camouflage. Without it all camouflage would vanish. And so the ability to use this vitality well is as necessary to life as is the necessity to use air for breathing.

With the hands that he does not think he has, our imaginary man then feels the contours of his body. But does this help him in his dilemma? No. He yells witchcraft. If someone else says “Oh, I feel a body,” he says “You are a medium.” Or, if you prefer, a crackpot. The fact remains that you have within yourself the evidence.

This is not meant to discourage the intellect, but the intellect has never yet been used for the purpose for which it was developed. I suggest a brief break, and may I say that I am unusually pleased with tonight’s session, and with Ruburt’s performance, since this material is coming to you without any distortion whatsoever, as far as I can tell. This is indeed our best session to date.

(Jane felt about the same as she did at our last break. Now that the session was over she realized that she’d had hardly any consciousness of what was going on through the whole thing. Yet, she didn’t feel as tired as usual. We had little thought of continuing however.

(I waited quietly, and in a moment or two the sensation was gone. I was balanced on an arm of our davenport talking to our company. I had the odd feeling that the sensation was related both to the subject of conversation, and to some kind of message or communication I sensed or felt within; I believe that each time I experienced it, I was involved in talk about other people; relatives, children or perhaps parents.

(The third time, after 12:30 AM, I was standing in the doorway to our kitchen talking to Jane when I had the sensation. This time it was not as strong. Even then, I was not quick-witted enough to capitalize upon it, perhaps by asking questions aloud. I was too involved, too swept up by this feeling, to be that objective on such short notice.