“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This session was unscheduled. Today we had looked at a house in the country just outside Elmira. It had caught our fancy to some degree and was possibly within our ability to buy, if we could take the word of friends of ours. The house belonged to an artist and schoolteacher who had left town for good; Jane had met him at the gallery, I had not. The house offered privacy but seemed to raise as many questions as it answered, one of them being that it was situated on a hillside and was accessible only by a very steep dirt road that was not maintained by either state or county.

(In addition to the teacher’s house, we had indeed looked briefly at a rebuilt schoolhouse owned by Mr. Marvin, whom Jane and I barely know. We had not entertained any though of buying it, however, since we had heard the price was high previously, and did not care for the location. Seth was very serious as he relayed the above information through Jane.)

It would not do in any case for you to purchase land that is closed in. This would not work out for either of you. It would bother you Joseph, as well as Ruburt. It is a very good idea for you to buy a house with land about it at this time. You were once a landowner, as you know, and your great desire for many acres stems from this.

I am certainly not going to make any decisions for you. The house at which you looked today should prove an excellent buy, though I am not necessarily speaking in financial terms. The intimacy with nature that you would enjoy there would pay off in ways that you do not know.

If you purchase the house, you will paint two pictures in particular, landscapes in tempera, that will help set your name. The house itself is good, for it is high and near water. You should be near water. You should not, however, be on low ground. You should not buy a house, even with much land, that is not near water, for it will not content you and you will give it up. Water, that is a body of water, has value for the development of inner abilities.

In your time to come, if possible you would do well to live by an ocean or even a large lake. A river is the next best thing, as long as the land is not low. The house at which you looked is good, again, because it is on high ground, and because it is above and near water, and is without seepage. There is rock beneath. The foundations are good, and the currents far down beneath the foundations are good ones. I am speaking here of something else which we have not yet discussed.

The hill is a friendly and not threatening one, and in other seasons the setting is more open than it is now. The psychic attributes of the house are good ones. It is one of many locations which you would find very suitable, and which if I may say so, would seem almost to be made to order.

The child who lived in the house until recently was somewhat disturbed, and had he lived there longer the house would not have remained psychically beneficial, but it is psychically beneficial now. High land such as this is good from a health and psychic viewpoint. I do not know of any impending danger with the neighbors, who stick alone.

(Break at 7:40. Jane was dissociated as usual. The time had passed rapidly, it seemed. The house had, we had been told, about an acre of land, although it was all on the steep side of a hill. We had found it unlocked and had gone inside, but had not thought to examine specifically the foundations. On one side the hill dropped down to the highway; on the other side it rose at a steep slant. Jane and I had wondered about landslides.

For reasons too complicated to go into, a larger amount would not be paid off until much later, because the fears that you would have would prevent full utilization of your energies. The energies released in the purchase of the house at which you looked will, themselves, indirectly allow you to pay off the amount within the five-to-eight year period.

You have no worries at this amount. This is not a general statement, but applies to the specific house of which we speak. All the conditions change when the object or the land is different. A house psychically unsound would greatly cut down your ability to pay for it.

I anticipate no road difficulties. Your idea of trading your car for an old jeep would work out very well, and would not be costly. All windows in the house should be, as Ruburt suggested, opened; let the hilltop air blow through. The bottom of the house has been closed for too long, but there is no great difficulty here. Opening the windows in the lower portion will abet a slight musty dampness.

(There are two other houses on the hill, both quite far from ours; one is above it a good distance, the other beyond it.)

(It might be added that the house sits on the hillside on one side of the main highway leading west out of Elmira. On the other side of the highway runs the Chemung River. Jane and I could see the river from the long front porch of the house, looking down through the trees. The view would obviously be even better in the winter.)

I would strongly suggest a garden, in which both of you work. You will find a strong attachment to it, Joseph, as will Ruburt, and there is room. With the surrounding woodland, I see that a garden and a quiet lawn place to the side of the house is very good. You will find that a very small pond arrangement, of the artificial purchased sort, a basin arrangement where water drips through rocks, behind the glass windows in the rear, here with a very simple grouping of rocks and flowers, would serve you to great benefit: as a place of inner contemplation, in which the inner senses would greatly expand their reach.

The large room is healthy, the white color good. The cellarway must be aired very thoroughly. If you purchase the house I will go through it again to insure that you have the most beneficial psychic atmosphere.

(The house was very dirty and unkempt, and I wondered whether such a small thing as a toy ball could remain undiscovered by Jane and me for some time, with Willy perhaps playing with it in the meantime.)

I would suggest, if you purchase the house, that you often take your meals in a dining room. The act of eating is psychically significant, and when possible should be treated as such. It is indeed a communion of sorts.

The man who lived in the house did have a destructive and sometimes cruel tendency. Nevertheless he was basically creative, and despite uncontrolled and undisciplined energies, his basic creative inner sense added to the psychic atmosphere, but would have turned against him had he remained.

I take it for granted that you will have a telephone if you purchase the house in question.

(End at 8:30. Jane was dissociated as usual. My hand felt no fatigue, even now. We spent some time discussing the session, and the fact that our present landlady had gone up with us to look at the house we were interested in a second time. She had liked the house on sight and was going to discuss it with her husband.

The future relationship should be maintained, even though you live in their house no longer. There is a significant tie-in.

(And there is no doubt we will miss the apartment, if and when we move. Seth’s reference to a safe place to swim concerns the stretch of the Chemung River that we could see from the hillside position of the house we are interested in.

(Jane is up for a substantial increase in salary at the art gallery where she works part time. We were wondering whether Seth had included some as yet unknown [to us] future salary of hers in his calculations as to whether we could afford to carry the house.