“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Peg and Bill Gallagher visited us sometime before 9 PM this evening. Peg is a reporter for the Elmira Star-Gazette, and will do the news story about the sale of Jane’s ESP book. After the conversation had turned to matters psychic, Jane played the tape recording of the Father Trainor episode of last February 11. In Volume 3 see the 131st and 132nd sessions, and the notes on pages 261-63.

(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.

(This was her last conscious thought. Immediately the same voice effect again manifested itself in no uncertain terms, and Jane then swept through the long poem without pause. Her voice did not bother her; indeed it became very loud and powerful and dramatic, very vibrant. She remained seated. She held the book in her right hand, and used many gestures with her left hand that were unlike her usual mannerisms. Almost at once it became apparent that the psychic phenomenon taking place, whether or not it involved a medium’s contact with Father Trainor, was much superior to the version already on tape.

(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?

(This we take to be a reference to the Father Trainor episode of earlier this evening.)

Now, involving the performance on Ruburt’s part this evening, we have here once more another example of the nature in which action is changed by itself. For indeed, as it was possible for Ruburt to some slight degree to allow her friend to speak, nevertheless the action involved in the whole situation nevertheless changed not only Ruburt, but also necessarily changed her Father Trainor, in that any action of its own nature can never remain the same.

His personality, that is the Father Trainor personality, was of necessity changed by this communication in the same manner that any experience will always change any personality.

(We have always thought of the 33rd session as furnishing the most dramatic display of voice changes on Jane’s part, both in volume and a lower register. I would say that tonight’s session saw Jane surpass those voice effects as far as sheer power and staying ability went by some little margin; but I do not think her voice dropped as low. Nevertheless it was very vibrant and strong, and Jane now told us she felt no aftereffects, her cold notwithstanding. She said that before the Father Trainor demonstration she had been concerned about her voice being able to give a session tomorrow night, Monday, let alone tonight.

I regret that you must be so involved in your notetaking. This evening’s session, all in all, will be most beneficial to Ruburt, and I hope it will be beneficial to you. I must work along the lines of his development. This involves us in many circumstances that are necessary. I cannot get around him as far as his abilities are concerned. I will not push him. We would lose in the long run. The spontaneity of the whole night’s adventure, including the Father Trainor episode, was advantageous. He, Ruburt, is basically with me all the way, but he has Jane to contend with.

(During this break, since Jane’s voice had again been very low and dry, almost a whisper, I made the unfortunate remark that her heavy smoking this evening was responsible. This brought on her most spectacular voice display of any of the sessions to date, bar none. She began speaking in a voice that was at least as loud as that used in the Father Trainor experiment earlier this evening, and that was loud indeed. Resume at 2:05.)

(Jane laughed as she finished the sentence. She stared intently at me as though daring me to ask her to be quieter. Her voice now surpassed by a good deal the Father Trainor experiment. It was not a deeper voice particularly.)