“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Saturday and Sunday, September 19 and 20, Jane and I spent visiting my brother William Richard and his wife Ida, in Rochester, NY. Bill has been acting as custodian of the second carbon of the Seth material. Jane and I have always made it a policy to have a carbon of any written material—prose, poetry, etc., in separate hands outside of our house, as a protection against loss by accident, fire, etc.

(We had not asked that Bill follow the material from session to session, feeling that it was for him to decide whether to pay any attention to it or not. Jane and I were therefore pleasantly surprised to learn that Bill and Ida had read some of the material; and while not hostile to it, they still expressed a healthy skepticism—an attitude Jane and I much prefer to any gullible, overenthusiastic belief blindly undertaken.

(Ida’s brother, Louie, had also been following the material somewhat more thoroughly, and he visited the four of us at Bill’s home Saturday night. Louie has had more experience than Jane or I with ESP activities; and when in the course of conversation the question of Jane giving a session arose, Jane and I were somewhat surprised, not anticipating this, and did nothing to push agreement to such an idea. However, when we finally became convinced that a session was quite welcome to Ida, Bill and Louie, if only out of curiosity, Jane and I agreed to try to hold one.

It was not necessarily my intention to deliver a session this evening. Nevertheless, I did feel a legitimate welcome in advance; and since I feel already as if I know very well two of the present gathering, and since furthermore we have dealt with them in our material, I am more than willing to greet both of them personally.

(Here of course Seth refers to Bill and Ida, having given some information on their past lives in various sessions, many sessions ago.)

(Break at 11:02. Jane was again fully dissociated, far-out. There followed a conversation mainly between Louie, Ida and Bill in which family matters were discussed. Not being versed in these, Jane and I could say little, and we had no way of knowing how valid the session’s material might be, or prove to be.

(“Good night, Seth.”

(The five of us were discussing the session when Jane spoke for Seth again, abruptly rising and dictating in the same strong voice. She spoke without wearing her glasses, but instead left them on the floor near where she had been sitting. Each time, pacing back and forth across the room, seldom looking down, it seemed she might step on the glasses, but she did not. Resume at 11:51.)

I may sound irascible, and if I do then indeed certainly I shall try to blame it on Ruburt, and say it is a distortion, though it is no distortion. I find it, however, a rather painful duty, self imposed, to delve into personal backgrounds, and consider myself rather dignified to adopt the pose of a Peeping Tom. But there are too few who can, either, look within themselves with candor, and if this material does anything, it must be oriented toward knowledge; and knowledge must be applied in your case in human terms.