“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

SESSION 210

(The 17th envelope test was held during this session. The test object, sealed in the usual double envelopes, was the insurance slip for the manuscript of Jane’s ESP book, dated August 30,1965. A drawing of it is not necessary since the test data did not coincide by a wide margin. The data, and Seth’s explanation of the results, appear in their regular places in the session.

(At 8:30 PM this evening our landlady, Marian Spaziani, and a friend of hers visited us briefly. Marian and her friend, Helen Dyer, both know of the sessions but have not witnessed any. Helen’s husband recently died after an operation for lung cancer; this evening Helen described to Jane a recent experience in which she felt her husband was speaking to her while she slept. Helen told us she has dreamed of her husband many times, but felt this particular experience was something other than a dream; she stressed its clarity, its reassurance and simplicity.

(It might be mentioned here that quite a few sessions ago Seth dealt with a similar vivid experience of Marian’s, in which she received a message from the father of her husband; the father died perhaps a year ago. See the 100th and 101st sessions.

(The session was held in our back room. Jane spoke while sitting down, in a quiet voice for the most part. Once again she was smoking as the session began; this meant her eyes had to open at least narrowly to find the ashtray, but she was looking down in the act and I could not actually tell whether or not they did open. Jane’s pace was quite slow, with many pauses, in the beginning. I should note here that Marian and Helen left us at 8:55, and that Helen lives just a block from us.)

At Ruburt’s stage of development however, he reacts as a result of emotional impetus, which is picked up rather directly, and which acts as additional energy in transmission. It is for this reason that he now and then does enjoy visitors to sessions, because he instinctively feels that he is thereby learning to manipulate and use these abilities oftentimes, and thereby learn the various subjective feelings that accompany valid perceptions, and to distinguish these from subjective feelings that turn out to be based upon invalid perceptions.

In other words, he enjoys the practice, whether or not he knows it. When for fairly long periods there are no witnesses to sessions, then both Ruburt and myself do indeed lean toward unscheduled sessions when informed friends of yours are present. On the other hand when several sessions in a row, regular sessions, are witnessed, then of course I grow impatient because I am anxious to get back to our own material, which is stressed when we are alone.

I meant to mention this earlier, for there is some pattern to our unscheduled sessions which you have not realized. This is why I worked so well with Philip, to make the most of the opportunity while we did have a guest.

(See the 204th session. Philip is John Bradley’s entity name. To date 40 sessions have been witnessed out of 210. Jane’s eyes were now opening and closing rather frequently as she spoke.)

We certainly would not want all of our sessions to be witnessed by any means, so you have no fear in that direction. On the other hand again, such experience is necessary and quite valid, and should be accepted certainly as a part of our work.

(In the 185th session Seth dealt to some extent with what he called Jane’s healing ability; one point he made was that the desire to help others would aid the development of this ability. Seth of course has given specific data on various physical ills for some witnesses, and for Jane and me. Whenever the advice was acted upon it worked out very well, whether the difficulty discussed was physical or psychological.

(Seth’s malignant diagnosis in this session represents the most drastic to date, and left Jane and me wondering about the best course of action to take in such cases. Jane resumed at a good rate, and with her eyes closed, at 9:39.)

(Jane said she was somewhat startled to feel the envelope touch her lap. She hadn’t expected a test, and I hadn’t mentioned it to her before the session. Actually I had prepared the test envelope some weeks ago.

(Since Jane had developed the photograph idea so consistently in the test, we thought something must have happened to put her on that track, and we said aloud that we hoped Seth would deal with the reasons for this before ending the session.

(In the 197th session Seth suggested that I not wait for him to request an envelope test. In a recent session also he said it was not wise for such tests to be given at the end of a session, when Jane is tired. Hence I thought I had picked a good time to give her the test envelope. I did not anticipate that it would not be a good test because of previous information, or that it could interfere with subsequent tests.

We will at any time, Joseph, accept envelope tests, as long as they are given to me after the Instream material. There is indeed more that should be said along these lines, and perhaps at our next session we shall make certain points clearer in this regard.

I suggest that we end the session; and I will also discuss the material of a personal nature that you have in mind at a later session. My heartiest wishes and good night.