“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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 word subjective, to you, implies immediately that which is not objective. However the events and actions of the probable system are indeed objective and concrete within their own field of reality. Your own physical system, you should remember, is only real and concrete within its own field. It is for this reason mainly that the physical system is so little perceived by you when you sleep.

These are impressions. Something that resembles a shield in shape, with inscriptions on it. Made I believe of metal, an insignia. Either the inscription or the insignia is of red color. The object itself of a metal color.

Fairly heavy in weight for its size. The edges of the object would ordinarily be sharp, it seems, but they are somewhat blunted. I get the numbers one eight eight eight, in connection with this.

Also a connection with flowers. Either they are represented somewhere on the object, or somehow connected with it, and small leaves. The flowers could be violets. The object is not full size. That is, it is not a soldier’s shield of full size, but a representation. And a connection with jewelry.

First, a connection with a scroll for the above object. The object which we have dealt with is Monday’s object. (For February 21.)

(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.)

Now. Something round for this evening’s object.

A vest. (Pause at 10:16.) The object is smooth, with moving parts. Twice, something on it twice, or two times.

Did I tell you this is this evening’s object?

A connection with grassy land, and strings, such as apron strings. Four, five, no, six, the number six. February. Someone runs away. A connection with round colored objects, and a person who was not familiar to you personally.

(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:

(“Something that resembles a shield in shape, with inscriptions upon it.” We suppose that since shields are of many shapes, this can apply to the shape of the envelope object. The printed copy on the coaster can be inscriptions. Our dictionary does not distinguish as to whether inscriptions need be lettering or designs, such as the three glasses on the coaster, or can be both.

(I was interested to note that our dictionary lists the word inscroll also, followinginscriptive, and that the last line of the data for the Instream object for Monday contains this reference: “a connection with a scroll for the above object.”

(“Either the inscription or the insignia is of red color.” Our envelope object, the coaster, is printed in a bright red. The color of the porous paper or board is a typical light beige or tan, not resembling metal, and certainly not heavy in weight for its size. Seth also mentioned these last two points in connection with the Instream data for Monday.

(“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.

(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.

(“An enclosure.” We thought this a reference to the dining and dancing establishment we visited last Saturday evening, February 19, where I picked up the envelope object. Not to the establishment itself, but to the particular table we sat at with the other two couples. Its location, in one corner of the place, is unique; it sits on a raised platform perhaps two feet higher than the other tables; the dance band is on the left, the fireplace on the right, with an excellent view of the dance floor in between. The table itself is round, and backed up by a wide circular leather-covered divan-type of seat. In short, it’s the best seat in the house.

(Note above that Seth first gives data connected with the object; next he tries to become more specific about the object itself. Later in the session he has something to say about this method.

(“Writing.” The object bears printed copy.

(“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.

(“A paper item.” The envelope object is a paper item. As stated, it originally was quite thick, so I peeled the top layer from it, containing the design printed in red, to insert into the double envelopes. This reduced it to the thickness of rather heavy writing paper. When this thin layer was enclosed between the regular two pieces of Bristol, then sealed in the usual double envelope, it was not possible to judge by feel, or weight, that it was in any way somewhat different from the usual envelope object.

(“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.

(“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.

(“February.” I picked up the object on February 19, but this is too general.

(“A connection with round colored objects,”. I thought this might be a vague reference to the fact that Marilyn found in her handbag, Saturday night at the establishment, a group of miniature plastic castings of animals that she had made for her two-year old son. They were translucent, of different colors, tiny horses that were not round as a marble is round, but with rounded simple lines. We toyed with them throughout the evening.

(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.)

(The number 4 does appear in the small code number printed on the envelope object, inside the bottom border. We missed noting this during break. We had also forgotten that we met Marilyn and Don Wilbur first at the dancing establishment, and had time for our first drink before Ann Diebler and her escort, Paul Sinderman, arrived.

(“Well, it seems the data on the Instream object for last Monday became entangled with tonight’s envelope object data. Did you pick this up from me, telepathically, or clairvoyantly from the envelope object itself?”)

(“From the envelope object itself, some time before we got to the envelope experiment?”

(In the 180th session, after the second envelope experiment, Seth told us he worked well clairvoyantly with objects, although at times telepathy could enter into such experiments.)

Yes. From the color red, which has strong connotations. The strongest elements are perceived more easily, as emotional elements are always perceived more easily. Initially with objects, I pick up shapes, and emotional connections, and then try to get Ruburt to let me narrow these down more specifically.

(Tracing of the pencil drawing on white paper, used as the object in the 36th envelope experiment, in the 236th session for February 28,1966. Drawing executed by my boss, Harry Gottesman, at the Artistic Card Company in Elmira, NY.)

(Reduced tracing of my pencil sketch on transparent tracing paper. There are pencil rubbings on the back, so the sketch can be traced. The object is folded, and enters into the envelope data.)