“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Once again I planned an envelope test for the session, should the opportunity arise. I prepared the usual double envelope while Jane was working at the front of the apartment. For the test I used a color photograph of my brother Bill, his wife and two young children, taken in Webster, NY, in 1959. I found the photo accidentally in my files earlier in the day while looking for something else. I knew Jane hadn’t seen it for some time, perhaps years. Bill is 37 years old.

It is an extremely interesting one, though somewhat complicated. This ability is a natural one, operating to some degree or another within every personality. It is a natural protective mechanism of inner origin, directly affecting matter. It is a self-correcting mechanism. The individual’s health is determined by his ability to take advantage of, or to use, this mechanism.

Ruburt has for years done fairly well in this matter, automatically regulating large areas of his health, with as you know some small failures, such as the sinus condition mainly, and the faulty eyesight.

Generally he has done very well in regulating the physical organs, however, and in maintaining a level of effectiveness that is most unusual, considering his early unhealthy psychic environment.

Ruburt should drink no more than five cups of coffee daily at the most. If he is not giving up his cigarettes, then as you suggested moderation should be used. The present fifteen a day will do for now, but this should be reduced to ten when it is feasible.

The nervous cigarette habit does not help him however, for it diverts his energies. Obviously it is a symptom. Moderation at least will be of great benefit, if he follows our suggestions.

His efficiency in this healing process can indeed grow.

Ruburt has the impression of the school fence across the street from the house in which he lived, and he is thinking of a particular photograph of his own that involved his house, the street, part of the fence, and perhaps some children. We are letting all of this come through.

(Once again the test data was interesting. This was the first time, also, that Seth had separated his own data from that of Ruburt’s, or Jane’s. Refer to my tracing of the photograph on page 242. Seth’s data can be seen to apply rather directly, with the exception that the photo is of four people instead of three. This is dealt with after break, along with the matter of chimney shapes.

Now, I knew this was a photograph. Ruburt however, through association, made certain deductions. He picked up from me the fact that children were involved. He picked up the road and the pyramid shapes. This led him to think of his old home, for in the afternoon the shadow of its roof threw a pyramid shadow form upon the road.

The children that I perceived, he projected into this picture of his, a photograph in which children were indeed involved. The photograph used in the test was taken in the afternoon. The chimney was not in the picture. I saw the chimney of the other house in the test photograph, but this does not show there.

(See my sketch of the photo on page 242. The baby, in white sits on the lap of my brother’s wife, Ida. The pattern of his clothing and blanket forms a triangular shape, very similar to the shadow shapes on the snow; these forms can be called pyramid easily enough. The baby perhaps did not come through as well as the other three figures because of a lack of contrast.