“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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.

(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.)

(Break at 9:27. Jane was dissociated as usual for a first delivery. Her eyes had opened and shut often. Her pace had been quite rapid after the slow beginning. She remembered the material concerning Helen Dyer, and now told me she had felt an immediate rapport with Helen when she entered our apartment this evening, and a desire to help her in some way. Helen has been in our place once before, perhaps a couple of years ago.

(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.

(It was 9:45. I placed the test envelope in Jane’s lap while she gave voice to the above sentence. She gave no sign that she was aware of my action, other than a slight movement of her legs, but she picked up the envelope almost at once. Her eyes were still closed. She held the envelope in her right hand, making no effort to determine its contents by feeling, twisting, etc.)

(Break at 9:57. Jane was dissociated as usual. Her eyes had remained closed, her pace had been quite slow. I had the impression as she spoke that she was struggling to sort out what she wanted to say.

(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.

(Jane said that at the moment she had no idea why she clung to the photograph idea. Although she was a little tired, she didn’t feel particularly bad. She now revealed that she had actually seen within three photographs, rather than the two mentioned. She saw these photos quite clearly, she said, and knew that two of them were in our album, and the third in a file of her own. From the descriptions given I recognized them also.

(It was now time for the 19th Dr. Instream test. Jane’s pace was now again very slow. Although I could not see her doing so, her eyes must have opened a trifle to find the ashtray, since she was again smoking. She sat with one hand to her face, her head tipped down, speaking quietly. She took many pauses, some of them long. Resume at 10:06.)

(Jane’s voice was determined, her eyes still closed.)

This fact hampered that work this evening. Ruburt knew the earlier test was poor, and he set up defenses.

Now as to the poor results themselves in the envelope test. Primarily there are two reasons for our unsatisfactory results. He did not want to have the test given to him while the Instream material had not yet been given for one thing, and so this did not work for us. To begin with however he simply was not at his best in any case.

He was shocked by the earlier information that I had given concerning the woman, and this led him to block further information for the evening. He worked, or allowed me to work through, the layers of personal subconscious only, which now and then may yield valid information, but highly distorted as a rule, and unreliable for our purposes.

He put himself back in time, seeing three photographs of himself, progressively further away from the present, in order to separate himself from the sort of information that he heard himself giving earlier this evening. So all in all he was not working at his best, and it can hardly be expected that he do so constantly.

(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.

(End at 10:34. Jane was dissociated as usual.)