“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(No session was expected for tonight. Bill and Peggy Gallagher visited us unexpectedly at about 8:30 PM. The four of us decided to try a sitting like we had on Friday evening, August 20,1965. That didn’t develop into a session; Seth did’t speak. I have separate notes on it, showing how Jane expressed voice contact with an entity professing to be a female Gallagher. The details given by the entity were however not overtly familiar to Bill or Peggy. After the sitting we concluded that although something had taken place, the information was probably garbled.

(I made no attempt to take notes, nor did Peggy. What follows is my reconstruction from memory, made immediately after the session ended. I kept my notebook beside our bed also, and whenever I thought of something to add I did so, up until noon of the next day. Jane then read the notes and suggested any corrections she happened to remember. Peggy and Bill did most of the talking during the session. They are reading the early sessions now, and so what developed was a rather condensed review of some of the main tenets of the material, for their benefit.

(Seth periodically asked if any of us had questions. For myself I avoided questions that might lead to answers I would wish to have on paper. The Gallaghers’ questions were of a more general nature usually; and many of them had to do with Bill’s family history. Seth usually addressed Bill as the “friendly or inquiring Jesuit,” and Peggy as the “cat lover.”

(Much of the session was a kind of review, as the 162nd session was, which the Gallaghers also witnessed, with Lorraine Shafer. The material on the construction of matter was gone over. Seth talked a good deal on the cooperation of all living things in maintaining our universe, and of how it’s so very wrong for civilized human beings to kill. He dwelt upon this at some length. I believe a remark Bill made before the session began, about animals, led to this.

(A new physical effect concerned the candle, standing on the table against the wall perhaps three feet from our group. All the windows in the apartment were closed with the exception of one kitchen window, because the night was extremely windy; this wind aggravated my hay fever. The candle burned with a low flame, one perhaps a quarter-inch high. Seth, talking about physical effects, said that he could probably have levitated the small coffee table we sat around tonight, with Ruburt’s help. But Ruburt still needs to develop his abilities further, Seth said. Abruptly the candle flame shot up to a noticeable degree, at least twice its previous height. The increase in brightness was plainly noticeable, causing all of us to look at the candle. Seth then said he had caused the flame to grow. It stayed brighter for several minutes as he continued talking, then died down. Bill confirmed my own thought at the time, that a stray burst of wind had affected the flame. We had no way of knowing if wind was responsible or not; the kitchen window was perhaps fifteen feet away, and around a corner. Seth went on to say that the candle flame would not grow higher again, because Ruburt was alerted to the effect now, and was watching it.

(Bill’s mother, who was also an arthritic cripple like Jane’s mother, was a very aggressive personality, a masculine one, who developed arthritis in order to lose her mobility and thus avoid harming Bill’s father and the children. She felt a growing rage and aggressiveness she could not control. Seth said association worked here, in that Jane could perceive this data because her own mother has arthritis. Bill’s mother was very fond of flowers.

(Bill’s mother was fascinated by the relationships of numbers, Seth said, and the color blue. After the session Bill revealed that his mother had been a bookkeeper, which Jane and I did not know previously. Peggy recalled that Bill’s mother had been buried in a blue dress, which upset Bill’s father very much; and that Bill’s mother had many blue dresses in her wardrobe.

(Seth told Bill he subconsciously blamed his father for his mother’s condition, after Bill remarked that whenever he and his father were together for a few minutes they would end up arguing. Also, when a small child Bill had overheard a sexual encounter between his parents, in which his mother cried out. Bill took it to mean his father had hurt his mother. Later when his mother fell ill, Bill made the subconscious connection with her illness and this earlier incident, and blamed his father for his mother’s illness.

(Bill’s mother tried to project her illness to other members of the family, as often happens also. This involved guilt feelings on her part.

(Seth slipped in some personal material on Walter Zeh before “Ruburt catches me in the act.” He prefaced this by saying that we were all friends here tonight, presumably I suppose if the information was considered to be personal. Just before this he had mentioned again the similarity between Jane’s mother and Bill’s mother. Now he said that Walter Zeh had also been an invalid in a previous life, and a female. For reasons he didn’t go into now, Jane owed Walter Zeh a debt, which she has paid in full. Jane had been attracted to him also in an attempt to make up to him, because she hadn’t been able to make up to her invalid mother. In his previous life Walter Zeh had been crippled because of an accident.

(Seth told Bill that a summer Sunday in 1946 is very important to him subconsciously. It involved Bill’s father William [Jane hadn’t known the name of Bill’s father], and an older man with brown hair whom Bill looked upon as being in a position of authority. There was some kind of disagreement as to Bill’s choice of a career [Bill had left the Navy not long before], an argument with Bill’s father; ever after that Bill didn’t get along with his father. Bill did not follow his father’s suggestions, I believe.

(Seth told Bill that his mother had been very close to another female in the family, though not a daughter. They had talked about childbirth, etc. Bill thinks the other woman was possibly the wife of his father’s brother.

(Right after the session began, Seth showed how Jane’s personal subconscious memories had, during the sitting with the Gallaghers, on August 20, distorted the material we received. What actually happened was that Jane’s maternal grandmother tried to get through, but Jane wanted to get Bill’s mother, and so named the entity speaking as a Gallagher. Seth mentioned that Jane’s own memories of the shredded-wheat incident should have told her what had happened. Also, Jane confused the corner grocery in her neighborhood with the grocery in Bill’s neighborhood, which was located in the middle of a block. Much, Seth said, Jane had picked up telepathically from Bill. Bill had looked up to the man running the grocery store in his neighborhood.

(Bill’s mother exerted a “pull” on his father which the father subconsciously resented. Her illness was not the result of events in this life only, but of past lives also.

(The number 5 is connected with Bill’s 1946 date and incident, but Seth could not say in what way, or how.

(Bill and Peggy agreed that Seth’s material on his parents seems to fit them psychologically, although some of the information given concerning Bill’s subconscious feelings toward his father was a surprise to Bill. At one point Seth asked Bill to not say so much when he answered a question, because this led Ruburt to start to actively and consciously consider the material and to make his own interpretations, which could be distorted. Seth also asked Bill not to tell us any more about his family relationships; presumably so that more material Seth came through with in future sessions could be checked with Bill’s knowledge, as in the blue dress and the bookkeeping incidents.

(Possibly Peggy and Bill could dream about events of interest to them, that were discussed this evening, if they used suggestion. They could also use the pendulum, though they might need more subconscious practice. Seth repeated often that Peggy and Bill should read more of the material.

(Bill’s mother had lived a previous life in China. Bill’s family was involved in very complicated psychic relationships. Bill told Seth he thought that on the whole his ulcer is a little better since he and Peggy had first attended a session, the 158th, of May 30,1965. Seth told Bill the ulcer is a parasite, and that he no longer needs it.

(The session had been going for perhaps half an hour when Bill suggested to Peggy that they leave because the hour was growing late. He felt tired. Seth then said he would wake Bill up, or get him interested, and he proceeded to do this by launching into the discussion on Bill’s mother.

(Seth told Bill and Peggy, in connection with the subconscious construction of their individual worlds, that they really lived in many worlds at once. At the end of the session Seth told the Gallaghers he had deliberately given the information about Bill’s mother being a bookkeeper and liking the color blue, in order to show them that valid information had been produced, no matter what its source.

(As Bill opened the hall door, Jane, standing beside him, came through as Seth, very loud, for a few words. But it was enough to make him shut the door quickly. When Seth then departed, usual good nights were said, the Gallaghers left and the session was over.

(The Gallaghers later confirmed that Bill’s mother was very fond of flowers.

(Jane’s maternal grandmother is on a midplane—at least one, and perhaps more, lives to come yet. [Or Bill’s mother, I can’t recall]. Later: we believe Bill’s mother is the one on the midplane.)