“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The 52nd envelope experiment was held. The object was a page of manuscript from Jane’s dream book. She had thrown it away on May 5; unknown to her I fished it out of the wastebasket. It is typed on yellow paper and bears her penned notations. The back of it is blank. I used the two pieces of Bristol board and the two envelopes as usual in preparing it for the experiment.

(In the 253rd session Seth told us he didn’t dream of us, just as we didn’t dream of him, and promised to tell us why soon. Before tonight’s session Jane said she hoped he hadn’t forgotten to go into the matter.

Now. I do not dream of Ruburt because I do not dream at all, in the same terms that you do. I switch the focus of my attention with conscious intent, so to speak. I take all portions of myself into any particular state of consciousness, and I enter various states of consciousness somewhat in the same manner that you can move from one physical country to another.

I visit you therefore, but I do not dream of you in the way that you might think. Now Ruburt has not, in his imagination, given me a particular physical image, and dreaming at your level involves visual images. So he does not dream of me in that way.

He does contact me however without his conscious knowledge in his dreams on some occasions. We simply speak to each other, but he does not remember what has been said consciously. Of course on other levels he is aware of these communications.

(See the copy of the envelope object on page 142. As stated it is the top half of the first page of chapter five of the book on dreams that Jane is writing. This was the first draft. Jane had thrown it away and I rescued it from the wastebasket in my studio. It is written on yellow paper; the notations were made by a pen with the same color ink as those on the copy. I wrote the date in pencil on the object the day I found it. It was folded once before going into the sealed double envelope. The back side of the object is blank.

(“The connection with anemia leads Ruburt to think of Helga Anderson, or a connection with artists or artwork.” Jane thinks that here Seth was trying to get her to say that an artistic endeavor, meaning the dream book, was involved with the object. Helga Anderson, a good friend, has anemia. She is the wife of Ernfred Anderson, a sculptor who was director of the art gallery where Jane worked part-time for several years. In the chapter five connected with the object, Jane uses a dream of Ernfred’s to make a certain point.

(“An initiation, not completed.” The object is the first half page from the first draft of chapter five of Jane’s dream book, and thus would be something begun or initiated, but not completed. There can be extensions here: Not completed could refer to the whole first draft of chapter five, or to the whole dream book itself. Also, perhaps, initiation could be linked to the suggested experiments for the reader to try, as mentioned in the headings. Jane’s idea is that this data refers to the dream book itself being started but not completed.

(“Connection with an animal.” Oddly enough, there are several references to animals in the chapter five from Jane’s dream book. In the early part of the chapter Jane used the phrase “cart before the horse,” and Seth mentions horse a bit later. One of the headings for the chapter is Dream Symbols and Culture. Discussing this subject, Jane mentions that fire helped primitive man “keep the beasts away,” etc.

(“The words unholy alliance come to me here.” The whole of chapter five, from which the object comes, concerns the close relationship between dreaming and waking life. We see the idea of alliance here, but not unholy particularly. Seth might have been spoofing us a bit, or it could be a slight distortion. My notes indicate nothing out of the ordinary in Jane’s delivery at the time.

(“A star shape. Something round, again, with spokes leading outward, but rather prominent.” Jane immediately thought of this diagram when she read over Seth’s data. It is on the back of page 112 of the first draft of chapter five of the dream book. Jane believes that she quite possibly made the diagram on the same day she typed up page 80, which was used as envelope object. Page 112 was used in the final version of chapter five, fortunately, and so was not thrown away. I had not seen the diagram before. It is one Jane made to help her see clearly certain points involving the whole self, and waking and dreaming states. There was much handwritten copy beneath it. Jane located the diagram immediately after this session. She said it is the only one she made for the dream book; she has the habit of making many notes on her manuscript, but very few diagrams of this kind.

(“Squares. Perhaps a game connection.” Games figure prominently in chapter five of the dream book. To make some of her points in the chapter Jane uses a recurring childhood dream of her own. This dream involved the large playground she visited often in waking life, across the street from her school in Saratoga Springs, NY. There were many kinds of games to be indulged in at the playground in waking life. In addition, in her recurring dream Jane kept recreating a series of games at the playground, in a section where there were none. There is more to the dream, but enough is said here to make the game connection.

(“Connection with four people, one of them disheveled,” I wanted to ask Seth questions about this data but did not get the chance. The object is part of the first page of chapter five of Jane’s dream book. In chapter five Jane discusses dreams furnished by four people specifically—Jane, myself, Bill Gallagher and our landlady, Marian Spaziani.

(Jane believes the term “disheveled” refers to herself here. See the recurring childhood playground dream, mentioned in the data dealing with the interpretation of “a game connection.” This dream, over a period of a couple of years during her childhood, had a powerful effect upon Jane; she has talked about it ever since I have known her. In the dream Jane constructed a set of games, involving physical apparatus like swings and jungle gyms, in a section of the playground where in physical life none existed. The morning after one of these dreams Jane would hurry to the playground before going to school, to investigate to see if by chance there were swings, etc., in that particular section of the playground. There were none. She would then have to hurry to school; most often she would arrive late, and breathing hard, and disheveled. She remembers this clearly.

(The TV screen entered the data because Jane used an analogy in the first couple of pages of chapter five of the dream book, involving a TV screen; she mentioned it quite extensively on two pages. The analogy does not show on the half page used as object. It begins on the bottom half of the same page—but not in the first draft of chapter five of the dream book. It is found instead in the second draft; rewriting the chapter, Jane then inserted the television screen analogy to help make some points clear.

(“Something not done, but begun.” I asked Seth but one question, asking for elaboration on “An initiation not completed.” See the first interpretation of this on page 148. Jane believes the bit of data above refers to the fact that she had begun the dream book, but hasn’t finished it yet.)