“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I had prepared a test envelope to give to Jane during the 181st session, of August 25, but did not do so because of the short session. When the envelope was not used I did not mention it to her, but saved it for tonight’s session. It contained part of a calendar page for April 1965. I came across the calendar beneath a stack of books and on the spur of the moment decided to use it for the test, wondering whether this type of cut and dried subject matter would have as much emotional pull for Seth/Jane as the subject matter of the first two tests. See the 179th and 180th sessions. Jane was out of the house when I prepared the usual double envelope.

(As will be seen, there were some very interesting developments because I chose this particular subject for a test.

The creative abilities have full reign within the dream state, and it is here that the personality first tests its creative intensities and methods. The personality’s physical environment therefore is greatly colored and formed by his dream existence. There is some leakage from waking-life experience to dream experience, but this leakage usually represents the material needed, or the problem to be solved. Mental events and dream events are primary. The individual first manipulates situations within the dream reality, and then transposes his characteristic method of handling them upon the physical reality.

(During break Jane mentioned that Seth had not yet discussed my vision, noted on page 223. Nor had I given her the test envelope. I had discovered that I was reluctant to break into the material when it was going so well, and when Jane gave such an indication of involvement with it. I thought it might introduce an alien note, and also that it might interfere with the results of the test itself.

Do you have no tests for me?

(Jane, still sitting cross-legged on the bed, smiled and learned forward. Her request caught me by surprise, and it took me a few moments to fish the test envelope out of its hiding place and lay it on the bed before her. It was 10:58; I thought it much too late for a test.)

I would here like to make a suggestion, that tests be given to Ruburt fairly close to the middle of a session, rather than at the beginning or end.

(End at 11:02. Jane was dissociated as usual. She said that as I fumbled around trying to find the test envelope, she was forced to wait. During this period she spoke to Seth: “Okay, I’m staying in the background, so you can come through loud and clear,” or words to this effect.

(When she opened the test envelope to see a clipping of a section of a calendar page, containing numbers and a few spots of red and yellow, Jane was quite disappointed. Her reaction was similar to my own as I listened to her recitation of the test data. A very interesting fact now dawned on both of us when we looked at the back of the clipping; for here we found most of the data Seth had given was quite correct.

(In making up the test, I had unwittingly focused my conscious attention on the calendar side of the paper. This was the first time I had used a test object containing material on both sides of the paper. The makeup of this particular calendar consisted of the days of the month on one side, and a drawing in color on the other.

(The test paper was folded once. The number five was on the calendar side, in the upper center. Directly back of the number, on the other side of the paper, were two buildings, one an erected house, with just above it a floor plan of another. There was a yard, and trees, and a blue simulation of blueprint paper in back of the floor plan.

(Returning to the outside, calendar side of the test paper, there were several strings of numbers. The calendar month was April 1965, although the year date doesn’t show. Returning to the other side of the paper, we see that a road leads up to the garage attached to the drawing of the erected house.

(Thus it seems that Seth traveled through the thickness of the paper, picking up impressions as he went along, and did this at least twice. He also mentioned “two people...perhaps a dress.” There were no people on either side of the test paper. Checking the whole calendar however, we noted there was a drawing of a man and a woman on the upper section of this particular page, but that I had left them behind in clipping out the test section. They would be about four inches removed from the clipping, and stood before another drawing of a house. We do not know if this is a legitimate interpretation of something “somehow connected with what we have here.”

(Jane said she had not expected any test, and so did not feel nervous about anything forthcoming.