“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(At 8:00 I tried psychological time, without success. I could not reach that necessary waiting and peaceful state just preceding sleep. Jane tried at 8:30, also with no results.

(By 8:55 Jane was nervous as usual, though not because of the witnesses. When she began dictating her voice was quite strong and somewhat deeper, more so than usual. She maintained this good voice throughout the session so it need not be mentioned again. Her pacing was rather slow, her eyes dark as usual.)

(Break at 9:25. Jane was more fully dissociated than usual, for a first monologue.

(Seth stated that Jim Tennant is one of the group he expects to gather around Jane and me. Jim T. reported that this afternoon, upon being invited to attend a session by Jim B., he felt his scalp distinctly crawl on three separate occasions; lifting up as though it would detach itself. Jim T. stated that his mother is quite clairvoyant, that often when he is ill, for instance, she will get in touch with him before he has time to inform her of his illness.

(Jane resumed at 9:32.)

(For emphasis Jane knocked on the table top. All through this material she spoke with much emphasis and used many gestures.)

(Break at 9:55. Jane was fully dissociated. Jim Beckett stated that midway through the monologue, he felt the presence of Bill Macdonnel so strongly that he expected to see Bill walk in the door. However Bill did not appear throughout the evening. It will be remembered that Jim B. and Bill were witnesses to the 47th session. That was the first time they had met, although Seth stated they had known each other in previous lives.

(Jane resumed at a slower pace at 10:05.)

(Break at 10:35. Jane was dissociated as usual. She resumed at 10:46, still using a good strong voice.)

(Break at 11:18. Jane was dissociated as usual. Seth’s reference concerned Jim Tennant’s wife. Jim T’s thought was that his wife could take shorthand notes of the sessions. Since she was quite young, Jim T was also concerned about her interest in the sessions, since she had not had time to develop an interest in ESP.

(Jane resumed her vigorous delivery at 11:25.)

(Here, Jane pointed at Jim T.)

(End at 11:40. Jane was dissociated as usual. Jim Beckett had departed at last break. We discussed with Jim Tennant our reasons for our very cautious approach to and with the Seth material, stressing our feeling that it was best to be on the very conservative side as far as claims, etc., went. We invited him to attend future sessions; and it was becoming more and more apparent that we would have to make some kind of arrangement for others to be able to read the material, without letting it out of our hands. We are of course most anxious that nothing happens to the one copy we have for ourselves.

(On Tuesday, April 28, 1964, as she was dropping off to sleep, Jane experienced a rather unpleasant sensation within her body. She had, she said, an abrupt feeling as though she had been “hit over the head.” Her body did not move on the bed; she merely felt this very definite jolt within, at the top of her skull. No other sensation or experience followed, and she fell asleep.

(Just prior to the following experience, Jane again underwent this jolting sensation. It was, she said, an actual physical sensation of a blow on the head. While it was fairly unpleasant, it was also over instantly.

(Since I work at Artistic Card Co. in the mornings while Jane writes at home for the same period, she has taken up the habit of experimenting with psychological time at about 11:30 AM, after her stint at the typewriter, and just before she gets lunch.

(On April 30, 1964, Thursday, Jane had a most interesting experience, at 11:30 AM. Trying psychological time, she suddenly realized that she was in her old environment, Middle Avenue, in Saratoga Springs, NY. She saw the street she had grown up on, very clearly and in a way that she could not do in a dream. She stood in front of her house, but with her back to it. It was winter; the ground was covered with packed snow; so were the roads, although there were no heaping snow banks.

(Jane then saw a young boy, pulling two other boys on a sled. She immediately knew it to be Curtis Lundgren, as a boy. She has not seen Curtis Lundgren, who is now a grown man, since our marriage ten years ago. The sight of the boy immediately confused Jane, since of course she knew Curtis L. to be grown by now. Yet the neighborhood was real. She thought: “Why, this isn’t today—yet it must be. Lundgrens live right around the corner.”

(Everything then disappeared. Without knowing how she did it, Jane then brought everything back, and looked it all over. She thought: “Why, it is today—there’s Rabe’s house on the corner, and the neighborhood store.” She then realized that all she saw was in the past. She looked at it again and gave a most heartfelt, deep sob. Then it was gone.

(Jane also remembers seeing some bare lilac bushes in a neighbor’s yard, across the street and next to a grade school building’s fence. It was a gray day, in the morning. She saw no other cars or people. And like me in my experiences, she did not think to attempt speaking to those she did see.)

(Copy of Jane’s account of Friday, May 1, 1964.