“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The 34th envelope experiment was held during the session. The object was the front of a recent letter to Jane from her publisher’s secretary. I folded it once, put it between two pieces of board and sealed it in the usual double envelope. Jane did not know I had saved it. I thought this object simple enough, while containing some good emotional charges, but as will be seen Seth picked up many connections. The experience turned out to be a complicated one. There were unexpected hits, and one not used.

Proper balance is not maintained otherwise. For one thing the change of environment is necessary—and I am speaking for you, Joseph, as well as for Ruburt; and here we shall let the matter rest.

The field of probable events exists as a reality. From it the self chooses those actions which shall become a part of physical reality. Here indeed free will enters into the matter. This is a pun. I would be disappointed if it were missed. It is a good one.

Now. Often clairvoyant information will appear to be wrong. In some cases this is because a different probable event has been chosen by a self for physical materialization. I have access to the field of probabilities and you do not—egotistically, you do not. I have access to your so-called past. I can view your present. To me your past, present and future merge into one.

This probable field seeds many other systems beside the one physical system with which you are familiar. The probable field is strongly composed of thought images, not physically materialized, but extremely vivid and actual storehouses of energy. Here is the material from which all pasts and presents and futures are made.

A connection with a grand view. A package. (Jane gestures.) Ruburt’s association is with something that did not arrive on time, but let that one pass.

(Jane said she felt her awareness “rising” as she did this; she believes she came part of the way out of her trance state, then sank back into it when she made her effort to relax. In retrospect she does not believe such tactics to be good ones, and will not repeat them.

(In order to understand the data it was necessary to write out a schedule of events; most of this was done after the session. As it was we spent about half an hour during break in an effort to begin to sort out the impressions. It developed that four letters were involved with the envelope object, and that one of these was enclosed in the experimental object. The common denominator here is that the date, January 25,1966, is somehow involved with all four letters. Seth uses this as a springboard for his impressions.

(Both letters of January 25 from F. Fell to Jane, although on different-sized paper, bore fold marks that revealed either one could have been enclosed in the experimental object, which is an envelope front from F. Fell, postmarked January 25. Since the data obtained from the experiment this evening refers to both letters, as will be shown, we have no way of knowing which letter was actually mailed in the experimental object. I did not realize until after the session that it would have helped to ask Seth this.

(It should be noted here that Jane spent most of the day working on the article for Fate Magazine, dealing with Seth and the envelope experiments. In the 233rd session, Seth said the article would be sold. In order to do the article. Jane spent much time going over past envelope experiment results. It was tiring work in its own way, and Seth gives this activity as one of the reasons the envelope experiment results were not better. He has also said in the past that this kind of work on Jane’s part can lower the level of her results.

(“Ruburt’s association is with something that did not arrive on time, but let that one pass.” After break Seth tells us he hoped to make this clearer, but could not. Jane and I thought this was a reference to the fact that F. Fell left for Florida on January 24, Monday, before reading Jane’s letter #1, of January 20, the previous Thursday. Letter #1 would not have arrived at his office by the next morning, Friday. Thus letter #1 was acknowledged in letter #2, written by F. Fell’s secretary, Rhoda Monks, on Tuesday, January 25.

(Jane has the habit of making such doodles, but as it happens letter #3 is the only one of the four letters involved that has doodles on it. Nor, for the record, does Jane’s unmailed letter of December 2,1965 to Father Martin contain any doodles. The doodles from letter #3 are reproduced below as tracings from the originals, and are not in the same position as on the original, standard-size 81/2 x 11 inch typing paper; the doodles are scattered over the page.

(I interpreted the portion indicated of the one doodle as bearing a resemblance to the imprint of a paw, although Jane intended this design as flowers. The netlike shapes and triangles are obvious.

(We now come to an impression that Jane had while giving the experimental data this evening, but to which she did not give voice. Naturally, she was considerably vexed to learn that it was a legitimate one, and pertained directly to the object. See the tracing of the experimental object on page 289. Note that the word “bread” is written upon it as part of a grocery list. As soon as she opened the sealed double envelope and saw the object, Jane realized she had had an impression of bread. She did not have an image of a loaf of bread, for instance, but the words “a loaf of bread,” rather quickly. She does not know why she didn’t give voice to them, other than that the next impression came along quickly. This has happened before, she said. Then succeeding impressions crowd out memory of what has been left unsaid, until later. In this instance, Jane could not recall very accurately what part of the data she was giving voice to when she had the bread impression, except that she was sure it wasn’t toward the end.

(“Just one then. Are we right about the connections between Father Martin and Rhoda Monks?”)

The impressions which you caught were indeed legitimate. I asked you to let the one impression pass because I hoped to make it clearer, but was unable to. Even when conditions are not the most beneficial, we are not too far off, you see.