“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane said later that listening to the tape did not “bother” her very much, although she felt some emotional and psychic reaction. On the tape she manifested many voice changes, while reading G. K. Chesterton’s narrative poem Lepanto, that were quite reminiscent of the way the deceased Father Trainor had read it. Afterward Jane endeavored to answer a question of Bill’s by reading a few lines from the poem aloud. Because of her cold and her still impaired voice, she thought she could get through a few lines at best.

(Since we had been taken by surprise by this development, we had made no plans to record the reading. I hesitated to interrupt, remembering Seth’s comments about the value of spontaneity. Jane’s eyes were open, but much darker and more luminous than usual. At times the almost deafening power of her voice, and its emotional content, were indeed thrilling. At the end of the reading Jane closed her eyes; when she opened them again she was out of the trance. She said she was subjectively aware of the gestures she executed with her left hand, yet she felt the hand was not really hers at the time. She felt that it was a fatter hand, belonging to a much heavier arm. Father Trainor, in the photograph we have of him, was a very heavyset man. Bill Gallagher felt that while she was reading Jane spoke with a brogue. Father Trainor was Irish.

We will not indeed at this time go into all the circumstances involved in the illness about which we have been questioned at this time. Nevertheless, we do here find a personality who has been, in this life, from an early age, involved in a most complicated network of emotional involvement, concerning both mother and father—and do I speak too quickly for you, Joseph?

The physical changes in his features were fairly obvious, and I am indeed sorry that you did not perceive their nature. I do not know if you can perceive the difference in the emotional proximity this evening between us now. And if I do badger Ruburt as I did this evening, it is because I too have an emotional reaction in all of this.

There is what amounts at times to a wall that separates us, as far as emotion is concerned, and this is our Ruburt’s doing, though of course he does not do it deliberately. Again, the strength and indeed the stubbornness of his ego, made the sessions possible, for without it in the beginning there would have been difficulty in maintaining necessary stability.

(Break at 2:00 AM. Jane was fully dissociated. She ended the delivery with a broad smile. She said that emotionally she “doesn’t know who she is,” this evening.

There is an emotional action, Joseph, in this session that is important; for our sessions deal with many layers, and I regret that this one layer is at most times neglected. I am endeavoring to give this evening’s session an emotional gestalt that will be an experience in itself, and in itself a lesson.

Ruburt presently feels no discomfort. He may be slightly tired tomorrow, but that is all. The emotional rapport built up between us will reinforce our sessions in general, and you know how important this can be. I must still work within the realm of his energies, and I do not even now believe that you realize how much more effectively he is using those energies, nor what strains our sessions have put upon his ego, which he has managed to triumph over.

(Break at 2:18. Jane was again well dissociated, although she realized her voice had been sounding out. Her eyes closed briefly at the end of the delivery, and when they opened she was out of her trance. In being so preoccupied with noting the great voice effects, I had been, I realized, less observant of the facial changes I had been aware of earlier; but there had been no doubt of the emotional interchange.

I would not, Joseph, take advantage, either of the hour, which is later, nor of you, nor Ruburt’s willingness this evening, if I did not know that the action so involved would more than repay you. And the emotional qualities that we have achieved are also more important than you know.

(And even now, at the end of the session, I had been still strongly aware of something different about her, of a strong emotional involvement and immediacy. Her voice, her mannerisms in speaking, the steady way she stared at me, all contributed to this feeling.