“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane was still not feeling tiptop, but thought she would rather have the session than miss it. It was held in our front room. She began speaking while sitting down and with her eyes closed, in a quiet voice and with short pauses.)

(Break at 9:16. Jane had been dissociated as usual for a first break. Her eyes had remained closed, her pace the same.

(Jane’s increased abilities could already be revealing themselves. She has been doing very well on her book on dreams recently; this afternoon she remarked that it was going so well that she wondered where the material was coming from. Seth spoke on the integration of our personalities also in the 228th session; the material grew out of his material on the poetry book Jane produced so effortlessly. Our thought is that the dream book material is also appearing in the same way. According to Seth we are just beginning to use our creative abilities.

(Jane resumed in the same quiet manner, her eyes again closed at 9:25.)

(True. See the summary of the unscheduled 247th session, which was held at the home of our landlady, Marian Spaziani. In the session Seth dealt with the coming operation Marian faces for an ovarian tumor that is benign, and gave Marian ideas for suggestion. Jane visited with Marian one morning early last week, and for the next day or two remarked that she felt quite like Marian’s description of her own symptoms. We considered that Jane was reacting to suggestion here, but were rather surprised since Jane knows how to guard against negative suggestion as a rule.

(Jane’s eyes had been opening at times. Now they closed, and she sat back to give the data for the 56th Dr. Instream experiment.)

(Jane paused at 9:34.)

(Jane took a long pause while delivering the last sentence. See the summary of the unscheduled 251st session. Seth cut the session short, and after the five witnesses had left Jane was physically sick to her stomach three successive times. We both thought it a panic reaction. Later Jane told me she had very little memory of what Seth had said, even in the very strong voice; this is unusual for her.)

(Jane paused at 9:40, then took the envelope for our 48th experiment from me without opening her eyes. She pressed it against her forehead with both hands.)

(Jane paused. Since Seth had announced a short session I hadn’t anticipated the chance to ask many questions—or even that an experiment would be held. I thought the session might still be cut short though, so I tried my usual last question first.

(Jane paused again. She still sat with the envelope held to her forehead, her eyes closed. I waited a few moments to see if the end of the session was near.)

(Break at 9:52. Jane was dissociated as usual. Her eyes had remained closed. Jane said Seth had surprised her by asking for the envelope. This was definitely Seth’s doing, she said, and he asked out of politeness.

(Jane progresses step by step. At the moment she said she feels uneasy when I ask questions pertaining directly to the object, but that she knows this will pass in the light of past experience. In the beginning also she could not name an object for Dr. Instream regardless of questions of accuracy. She does so easily now in most cases. Jane explained that our own experiments call up a chain of personal associations which she must sort out in reciting the data. She is not concerned with this in the Instream material.

(This did mark the end of the session as far as Seth was concerned. Jane and I made the connections that were clear to us. We would have liked Seth’s help on a few, but did not ask him to resume. See the copy of the envelope object on page 104.

(“A connection with something ripped or torn out.” Originally I tore the article out of the paper. Note that signs of this are still visible on the left hand edge. The bottom of the clipping was also rough, and I clipped it evenly with scissors before filing it; this was before I thought of using it as object; Jane of course knew I saved the article because it pertained to Bill Macdonnel. As it happened my clipping the article along the bottom made it fit just right between the usual two pieces of Bristol, and into the double envelopes.

(“A six and seven.” Offhand Jane and I made no connections.

(“with three people in particular.” When the police asked Bill to remove the painting from his gallery window, he asked advice from three people in particular. Two of the people are named in the sixth column of the envelope object. These two supported Bill’s decision to leave the painting in the window. The third man, Ernfred Anderson, who has a national reputation as a sculptor and teacher at Elmira College, and is a close friend of Bill, Jane and mine, advised Bill to remove the painting. Bill told Jane and me this on his visit earlier this evening, although we had heard this from other friends several days ago.

(“An impression again of an unscheduled event also, or an event not kept.” Jane is sure this refers to Peggy Gallagher, who wrote the news story used as envelope object. On Friday April 15 Jane and I and the Gallaghers heard about Bill’s difficulties. Peggy planned to call Bill Saturday but did not do so. We saw the Gallaghers on Sunday evening and learned that she still hadn’t seen Bill Macdonnel. Her story however was printed on Monday, April 18, which means she had to see Bill sometime Monday morning. This was possible because Bill Macdonnel, as a teacher, was still on Easter vacation. See also the “something not kept” reference and interpretation on page 109.

(“A connection with an L initial.” Jane and I made no connections here, and would have liked to ask Seth about this.

(“The number impression again…initials.” As Seth said this block of data pertained to an address Jane and I were given last evening, and is not related to the envelope object. The address also contained a series of numbers.

(“White or bluish-white. Small in contrast to a larger shape perhaps.” As stated, the smaller of the two near-circular sculptures, about ten inches across, is of polished silvery metal, highly reflective. This gives it the bluish cast. It also looks whitish, and gray. The quality of light can cause these changes in color. When Jane and I visited the gallery window to check out this data before writing it up, we noted the three colors mentioned above in this particular sculpture—white, blue, gray.

(“I mentioned several colors. The color bronze here.” This was in response to my third and last question, for more data on color connected with the object. Jane subjectively feels the bronze reference above deals with the overall color of Bill’s painting, discussed in the envelope object. In the first column Peggy Gallagher calls the painting done “In washed out shades of gray and orange.” Jane associates the gray and orange with bronze. I neglected to ask Seth about “The number 5.”