“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The regularly scheduled session for Monday, February 21, was not held. Jane and I felt the need to rest and vary our routine. As a result we felt much refreshed for tonight’s session. We wanted to make up for the Dr. Instream experiment we missed on Monday, however, so before tonight’s session we mentioned aloud that we hoped Seth would deal with this.

(The envelope object for tonight’s 35th experiment was a beer coaster that I picked up from our table last Saturday evening, at our favorite dining and dancing establishment here in Elmira. It was the one I had used. Jane and I met two young couples there by prearrangement, and we had much fun dancing. The coaster is made of heavy absorbent cardboard, so I peeled the top layer of paper from it. This contained the design, printed in red, without any unusual thickness to furnish Jane unwitting clues. It was sealed in the usual double envelope between two pieces of Bristol.

(The session was held again in our front room, and was not interrupted. The windows were closed to dampen traffic noise. Jane began speaking while sitting down and with her eyes closed, but they soon began to open for brief intervals. Her pace was rather slow, and she was smoking as the session began.)

(Jane smiled.

(Break at 9:23. Jane was dissociated as usual for a first delivery. Her eyes had opened and her pace had finally become rather good. She was not smoking when she resumed, in an even more emphatic manner, at 9:36.)

(Jane’s eyes now began to open widely. They were very dark. Her delivery was most emphatic, and she used many gestures, speaking rapidly.)

(Break at 9:58. Jane said she was dissociated more than usual. Her pace had slowed somewhat but been very emphatic, and her eyes opened many times. She had smoked, and sipped wine occasionally.

(It was now time for what we thought would be the 41st and 42nd Dr. Instream experiments. As usual Jane sat with her hands raised to her closed eyes. She was not smoking. On the whole her pace was not slow, although broken by many short pauses. Resume at 10:05.)

(Jane paused at 10:12, took a sip of wine without appearing to open her eyes, then gave voice to the last sentence above. She resumed her previous position. I have seen her reach out for objects often without seeming to look at them. She appears to have no memory of opening her eyes on such occasions; if she does slit them open I cannot tell, even from my position across a narrow table from her.

(Jane spotted it at break at 10:28 before I did: part of the above data seems to pertain to this evening’s envelope object. This was interesting to me especially. I prepared tonight’s envelope sometime after supper, then forgot about it in the press of other business. When the time for the envelope experiment arrived, I then had the idea the envelope contained another object, one I had thought of earlier in the day. So my surprise was considerable, consciously, when Jane opened the envelope and revealed the coaster.)

(At 10:20 I handed Jane the 35th double envelope and she took it without opening her eyes. She held it against her forehead with her right hand.)

(Jane rather blurted out the word Terwilliger, as though somewhat surprised herself, then gestured impatiently, her eyes still closed.)

(Break at 10:28. Jane was dissociated as usual. Her eyes had remained closed except for the possible instant noted during her pause at 10:12. In spite of the many brief pauses her pace had been good. On the average it is now much faster during these experiments than it used to be.

(See the tracing of the envelope object on page 301. As stated, Jane was the first to notice that some of the data given for the Instream object of Monday, February 21, appeared to apply to our own envelope object for this evening, February 23.

(How much of this data on page 305 might pertain to the Instream object we do not know, but Jane had intuitive feelings that a bleed-through had occurred involving the envelope object. I go along with her in that such feelings are legitimate, since the basis of these experiments, as Seth has told us many times, is emotional.

(Jane felt that the following impressions on page 305 could very well apply to the envelope object:

(“The edges of the object would ordinarily be sharp, it seems, but they are somewhat blunted.” Jane was perhaps more definite concerning this impression, than any of the others. She feels the sharp edges is a reference to the beer glasses depicted on the coaster: one can think of glass ordinarily as sharp-edged, but to be useful as a drinking vessel the material would have its edges smoothed, or blunted.

(“I get the numbers one eight eight eight, in connection with this.” My own idea here is that Seth/Jane picked up the three-ring design shown on each of the three glasses depicted on the coaster, and translated or converted this data into the number 8, three times. There is a graphic resemblance here. The numeral 1 appears in the code number, in small type, next to the bottom border.

(Seth goes over the envelope results with us to some extent this evening, and answers a few questions pertaining to such experiments. First however there follows the connections Jane and I made with the envelope object, and Seth’s data on page 306.

(“with an indentation that could suggest a border.” The object has a border, as can be seen in the tracing. In actuality the border is indented, or debossed, into the porous paper or cardboard material of the coaster, to the extent that it can be easily felt with the ball of the finger. This is a common effect obtained easily enough by the printer, through control of the pressure the printing plate applies to the object, and one which I work with often on my job. Jane however is not familiar with the term, debossed.

(“Connected with the initials J R.” Jane said she felt this was a reference to the entity names Seth has assigned to us, Joseph and Ruburt. Of course this kind of data could apply to many envelope objects.

(“Terwilliger.”, etc. This meant nothing to us, although Seth explains it later. At the moment Jane could only say that she had also found herself writing the word down in her daily predictions a few times lately, without knowing why.

(“A connection with grassy land”, led Jane to say a connection could be seen with the envelope object after all. When she gave this impression, she had the mental impression of grain; thus her voicing the word grassy came from the mental grain. Jane had the idea, now, that the envelope object advertised beer, made from grain.

(“Four, five, no, six, the number six.” Here again Seth leads Jane by his method of counting. There were six of us in our gathering last Saturday evening, when I obtained the envelope object.

(“and a person who was not familiar to you personally.” The connection here is tied in with the “grassy lands” data, but Jane and I did not see it during break.

(Jane’s eyes began to open at times when she resumed, at an average pace, at 10:50.)

(I can offer a connection, but cannot verify it with Seth until next session. After this session I remembered that the Wilburs are reading what we call Book One of the Seth material. This consists of the first 26 sessions. The first formal session was held December 2,1963. My introductory notes contain a reference to Jane and me borrowing a Ouija board from our landlord “in the fall of 1963,” which compares with the date given by Seth this evening, of September 10,1963. The notes refer to our attempts to use the board early in November 1963 also, without success.)

(Jane paused and smiled broadly. See the reference to “A connection with grassy land,” and “and a person who was not familiar to you personally.” in the envelope data. At once I recalled an incident that took place at the dancing establishment last Saturday evening; the six in our party had watched it with much amusement.

(It involved a man I see very occasionally at my job. He works in another department, and is named Hack Rice. Jane and I see him more often when out dancing that I do on the job. He is always accompanied by his wife. Early Saturday evening, we saw Hack Rice and his wife dancing, and said hello as we usually do. At this time Hack was quiet and smiling.

(For a while the couple then disappeared from view and we forgot about them. Much later, around midnight, when the floor was crowded, Jane and I saw Hack again. Now he was obviously feeling good, and dancing with another woman. Hack is what they call a slow and smooth dancer. To the amusement of most people, Hack and the woman, whom we did not know, put on quite an exhibition of exaggerated, sinuous, close-contact dancing.

(So Jane, while voicing the impression of “grassy land”, had the mental impression of grain, which referred to a man named Rice, who was present in the place where I obtained the envelope object. The connections are as far out as Hack Rice’s funny behavior.)

(This reminded Jane and me that during Saturday evening, Marilyn had described to us how her young son had discovered what fun there was to the universal game of hanging by his mother’s apron strings, as she tried to go about her duties in the trailer home in nearby Wellsburg, NY.

(Jane smiled. Her eyes were opening now, and she lit a cigarette.)

(End at 11:15. Jane was dissociated as usual, her eyes open often. She ended the session with a smile. Presumably Seth refers to the writings she has sent out recently. Her publisher, F. Fell, has written expressing interest in her book on the Seth material and on the poetry book described in the 232nd session, page 269. Jane has also received a letter concerning some of these poems from Playboy Magazine, regarding their consideration for publication as a book. All of this is tentative. In addition Jane mailed her article to Fate Magazine recently. See page 287 in Session 233. Seth said the article would sell.