“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(For the envelope test tonight I used my appointment card for my visit to the dentist earlier this month. As Jane did last time she visited Dr. Colucci in May 1965, I put myself in a trance state as an experiment, and was very comfortable. I also used Jane’s appointment card of May 5,1965 as the test object for the 15th envelope test in the 199th session. I picked the card for tonight’s session because I thought it would be loaded with strong emotional charges of a personal nature, whereas the identification card used in the last test belonged to a person almost unknown to Jane and me.

(The session was again held in our front room, and was not interrupted. Jane began speaking while sitting down and with her eyes closed. Her pace was a little slower than usual. Her manner was most amused, and she smiled often. She hadn’t been speaking long before her eyes began to open frequently; they were very dark. She was smoking as the session began.)

The reactions are beautiful examples. First of all Ruburt was worried, somewhat, concerning your own reactions when you found that you now had a new engagement for Friday evening, after already planning to cancel a previous one, in order to have some free time for yourself, and he felt to blame since he had already made a commitment to Mark—rather unwillingly, by the way. But it will harm him in no way to help Mark in his endeavor.

This is highly amusing, for he did not want to have a chair available for the owner of the second gallery. He did not want him in the house. However he felt quite guilty over this, for the man is a Negro, and he feared that his dislike would be taken as discrimination. To prove to himself that this indeed was not the case, he began a nervous, frenzied and altogether desperate attempt to make certain that enough chairs were available.

He was very fond as a child of Edward Briscoe, who was also Negro. Edward was poor and the victim of circumstances. He helped out in Ruburt’s household, therefore Ruburt feels that he should be extremely pleasant and helpful to any Negro, for this other boy’s sake. And so he felt extremely guilty because he did not welcome the thought of this other Negro into his house.

He was quite correct in assuming as he did that his upset had little to do with a lack of chairs, since he knew perfectly well that a sufficiency was available. Now, for another piece to our puzzle. The mayor is also to be present upon this occasion, and Ruburt thought subconsciously how pleased her friend, Edward Briscoe, would be in his simple way—in the old days—to be present, and how impressed he would be with the mayor.

I decided to mention this since he is at the point now—I am speaking of Ruburt—when he will not accept the superficial reasons given by the ego for many reactions, but seeks to discover deeper causes. There was also some other problem here, in that Ruburt feels, as you do, and quite rightly, that Mark is in over his head, psychologically speaking.

Let us get back to time. Now. The idea is current in academic psychologicalcircles that the child exists psychologically intact in the man, that the man contains within him the psychological replica of the child that was.

It is as much an illusion to believe that the past has vanished, as it is to believe that the future does not exist. The past does not vanish, for there was no past to vanish, in those terms.

(Break at 9:34. Jane was dissociated as usual for a first delivery. Her eyes had opened frequently and her pace had remained a bit slow.

(Break at 10:01. Jane was dissociated as usual. Her eyes were often open and very dark, and her pace was quite rapid as break approached.

(It was now time for the 32nd Dr. Instream test. As usual Jane sat quietly with her hands raised to her closed eyes. Her pace became quite slow, broken by many pauses of 15-30 seconds. She had been smoking earlier in the session but did not do so now. Resume at 10:10.)

A connection with a man as close to him as a brother, so to speak, with sandy hair, who is somehow connected with the object. (Pause of 50 seconds.) The object also had to do with an understanding that was reached between the owner and another man.

(As usual Jane took the envelope, our 29th, from me without opening her eyes. It was 10:30. She sat quietly, holding the envelope pressed to her forehead. Her pace became somewhat faster.)

(Break at 10:27. Jane was dissociated as usual. Her eyes had remained closed. She had no special thoughts about the evening’s test data except to say that none of the impressions she heard herself giving made any sense to her.

(“A disturbing event in the month of June, ’64.” Jane said she thought this referred to an episode when she should have visited the dentist, Dr. Colucci, but did not. She keeps a brief daily record of activities, and verified her idea. In her notebook she found a record that on May 31,1964, she woke up with a swollen lower left jaw. I thought it a bad tooth. At this time, not having practiced self-hypnosis consciously, Jane had a great fear of dentists. Instead of seeing a dentist she visited our doctor next door; he put her on a series of antibiotics that lasted for four days, on into the month of June 1964. The pendulum told Jane the swelling was psychosomatic and not a tooth; the doctor agreed, eventually, and Seth did too, in the 59th session for June 3,1964. See Volume 2.

(“A connection with another car, not your own.” When I visited Dr. Colucci on January 11 he told me that about a week previously, probably on Sunday, January 2,1966, he had been unable to make the climb up the icy road leading to his home outside Elmira. Dr. Colucci lives on top of a long steep hill, yet this was the first time in three years, he said, that he had been unable to drive home. Jane said Seth gave this bit of test data because we ourselves had had trouble making a nearby steep hill in our own car, also this month. Seth dealt with our own car troubles in the 222nd session. Jane said she thought the association between these two episodes was legitimate.

(“The object connected with an event that happened in the afternoon.” My dental appointment as shown on the test object was for 2:30 PM.

(“The vicinity of another city”, was a reference, Jane said, to the fact that Dr. Colucci lives in Pine City. Pine City is one of those small suburban communities that border more populated places like Elmira; though their population is small they actually cover many more square miles of land.

The June event did refer to Ruburt’s swollen gums, which were very painful. He feared most strongly that he would have to visit Colucci, and went to the doctor rather than see the dentist—although Colucci was out in the yard, and Ruburt saw him, as he will now remember.

(As soon as the session ended Jane said she did indeed remember seeing Dr. Colucci as soon as Seth mentioned that she would. Dr. Colucci’s office is but four doors down the street from the M.D. she visited. Seth was quite amused in giving this information.)

The gas station association, while not particularly helpful for your purposes, was in some ways legitimate. The other car did refer to the dentist’s difficulty in making the hill, as he told you at your visit. The gasoline station was Ruburt’s personal association derived from this, subconsciously.

For lately you could not make a hill, and as a result later you went to a gasoline station for gas. This was too broad an association for your purposes, but legitimate, and it should give you some idea of how these things work. For often quite legitimate associations such as these must be bypassed for more specific data. Nevertheless this particular impression does show the evidence of clairvoyant data.

The number 12 did refer to the address. However it was confused with people because of the people in the waiting room. There was a merging here, or a scrambling, of valid information.

The symbol was a distortion referring to the round object.

I saw at first the object as if it were—the round object which was the light—as if it were on the card.

Madison Avenue simply means New York City to Ruburt, and was connected to his Fell associations, which were wrong.

Now, they were wrong, but there was a connection here, in that Mr. Fell had recently had throat difficulties. Ruburt picked up the connection with the mouth, you see.

(End at 11:05. Jane was dissociated as usual. Her pace had been average, her eyes had opened frequently. As usual, she said, Seth could have continued indefinitely.)