“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The 47th envelope experiment was held during the session, as noted by the tracing on page 91. The object was a faded maple leaf that Jane and I had picked up, along with others, on a walk last year, probably in October 1965. I subsequently made a watercolor drawing of this leaf and another. As will be seen the object led to some data that is somewhat difficult to evaluate, but Jane and I believe it legitimate.

(Try as we would neither of us could recall just when we picked up this particular leaf, other than that it was in the early fall. I thought of October, then checked this with the pendulum, which for me is quite reliable. The pendulum agreed with my conscious answer. The location of just where I picked up this particular leaf is important in the data, and this we are sure of. This will be explained. Suffice it to say now that Jane and I will never cease to be surprised at the turns impressions attached to such experimental objects can take.

(The session was held in the front room. Jane began speaking while sitting down and with her eyes closed. Her voice was average and she used many short pauses; between the pauses, oddly enough, her delivery was rather fast.)

(Jane’s pace was better now and her eyes were opening often, for sentences at a time.)

Now. Something else here, that may at first sound unbelievable to you: The quasars are incredibly small, compared to the energy which they emit. The energy itself is so intense that it would seem that their size was considerable, but this is not the case.

(Break at 9:27. Jane was well dissociated once again. She said she has generally been “pretty far out” since the material on the quasars began to come through, a few sessions ago. It is a subject we are very interested in. See page 85, etc.

If you could go further however you would come, in one dimension, to matter again. This would be what you call negative matter. Then going further you would travel away from matter again, until there was no more. And then there would be positive matter again, and so on.

(Break at 9:58. Jane said she was again well dissociated. Her pace had been faster between many pauses, some of which were long. Her eyes had been open for paragraphs at a time. She hadn’t smoked.

(Jane now made a drawing of what she could recall of the atom image she had attempted at first break. This is the image of circles, representing the whole atom, including the part of it visible to us and the invisible portions. Jane was not satisfied with the drawing because she could not indicate the thickness or depth it should have, she said.)

(It was now time for the 55th Dr. Instream experiment. As usual Jane sat with a hand to her closed eyes. She spoke at a somewhat slower pace throughout the data. Resume at 10:10.)

(Break at 10:31. Jane was again more dissociated than usual, she said. Her eyes had remained closed throughout all the experimental material.

(See the tracing of the object on page 91, and the notes on page 92. At first the data meant little, but Seth’s answer to the second question furnished the key that made it intelligible to us. It would have been quite opaque to an outsider. This is a case where Seth used the object as a springboard to delve into data that is connected to it through location mainly. My thought was that the bulk of the material he gives had more appeal emotionally for him than the object itself, and he confirmed this after break. Still, the turn the data took was unexpected.

(The connection between the envelope object and the death-in-the-family reference is, simply, that the object was picked off the sidewalk beside the home of my Aunt Mabel, and that Aunt Mabel, Jane and I attended the funeral of the family member. The connection is more complicated than this, but to avoid confusion I will explain this portion mentioned above first.

(Aunt Mabel and I seldom see each other. Jane has met her just three times during the eleven years we have been married. The third time was at the funeral of my Aunt Ella on August 8,1965, in Wellsburg, NY. Thus the most recent time that Jane had a chance to speak at length to Aunt Mabel involved the funeral of a member of the Butts family. In addition Seth dealt at length with Aunt Ella in the 176th session of August 9,1965, the day after her funeral. Note that the object was secured two months after Aunt Ella’s funeral. We have noticed this curious time jump before in the envelope experiments, backwards as it were. Jane possessed strong emotional memories regarding the funeral, and clairvoyant knowledge of the envelope object in some form; evidently Seth responded to, or deliberately chose, what he perceived as the stronger intensities pertaining to Aunt Ella’s funeral over the object itself.

(It appears that Jane has formed an association that links Aunt Mabel with funerals, as seen above. If this seems tenuous, we think the idea reinforced by the fact that Jane and me and Aunt Mabel also attended another funeral together—that of Aunt Mabel’s husband, who died several years ago. This was the first time Jane met Aunt Mabel. Thus Aunt Mabel was involved with funerals and related activities on two out of the three occasions that Jane has spoken with her; these two occasions being the times when Jane could exchange more than greetings with her, also. Jane and I do not think tonight’s envelope data contains any references to the death of Aunt Mabel’s husband.

(“A connection with a series, and with several unpleasant episodes.” This refers to a series of telephone calls Jane found herself involved in when Aunt Ella died unexpectedly. The calls, most of them long distance, involved my parents and my brother and his family, and concerned topics like transportation, expenses, times, etc. I was at work during this period and couldn’t help. Jane found this quite unpleasant.

(“Tension, as something evenly balanced. Tension like wires… As in trying to go two ways at once. A pulling in two directions, with a balance of tension resulting.” Jane is subjectively sure these impressions refer to the telephone calls she was involved in, and the conflicting desires of the family members. Everybody had their own ideas, and the conflict had to be resolved on rather short notice. Things were of course finally straightened out.

(Now here is the data referring to the death of Jane’s grandmother: “Printed material with a picture. In parentheses: Ruburt thinks of old-fashioned Shredded Wheat cards, that were gray-blue in color.” Jane was six years old when her grandmother was killed by an automobile while going to a neighborhood store to buy Shredded Wheat. The connection here is a strong emotional one for Jane. Jane remembers clearly that on the day of her grandmother’s death she did not like what she had for supper. As children do, she cried and made a fuss. To placate her, her grandmother gave in to Jane’s demands for Shredded Wheat, and left the house.

(There follows a group of impressions related to a child. I asked Seth several questions about these. My brother Loren, his wife and his son Doug attended Aunt Ella’s funeral. Loren and his wife have a daughter, Linda, who could not attend because she was away at school.

(“Nineteen.” Linda is nineteen, or was in August 1965. The reasons for assigning the single word to Linda will be seen later.

(“An m-i-s-s.” At the time this was given it left me in the dark. Jane was quite definite about it however, even spelling it out. In view of the following data we do not think it was meant to apply to Linda.

(“Female.” Seth gave the sex of the child in answer to my question, thus eliminating Loren’s son Doug, who was 13 at the time. Nor do we regard Linda as a child.

(“We will say then a small child. A connection with a small child.” Seth gave this answer to my request for the female child’s initials; Linda is thus eliminated definitely. More important, Jane said that when I asked questions concerning the child, she wanted to say Linda but that Seth wouldn’t let her. Backing off from the idea of Linda because she felt it was wrong, Jane compromised with the small child data.

(“Will you tell us who the female child was?”)

(Aunt Ella was buried in Wellsburg, NY, a small town near Elmira. Jane and I do not consciously remember the name of the funeral director, and at the time of the services did not see any children about. Ann Diebler, whom I work with, lives in Wellsburg; she has witnessed a few unscheduled sessions. The day after this session was held she confirmed that the funeral director has two young adopted daughters, one 10 years old, the other 12. They are in fact sisters. Jane and I cannot say whether or not we ever heard, or knew, that the funeral director had daughters, adopted or otherwise. We saw him just the once.)

(End at 10:56. Jane was dissociated as usual.)