“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.

(The session was held in the front room. Jane spoke while sitting down and with her eyes closed. For much of the time she held a hand to her face, her head down. Her voice was quiet and she paused frequently.)

(Jane’s eyes now opened for the first time. According to Seth both of us lived in Boston before the Civil War, male and female then, as now.)

(Break at 9:28. Jane was dissociated as usual. Her pace had been average to begin the session but it had slowed a great deal when she reached the reincarnation data. Her eyes opened just twice, briefly, during the delivery. Most of the time she sat with a hand up to her face.

Later still, a dress shop, and then a restaurant, as the neighborhood deteriorated. Then, all new buildings. You were portly. The church was near the water, and it was visited on occasion by sailors. (Many pauses, some of them long. Jane’s eyes were closed and she was very restless.)

Give us a moment. (Long pause. Jane kicked her shoes off.)

(Break at 9:58. Jane was dissociated as usual. Her eyes remained closed and her pace was slow. She was aware that she was very restless. Jane said that during one of the longer pauses she felt Seth trying to get at the name Nostratious from the earlier note data. We thought Nostratious Elmo a most peculiar name. In an earlier session Seth told us Jane had been a medium in her Boston life, and that she had misused her abilities. This could account for the mention of a professional name above however. See page 86 in Volume 1.

(It was now time for the 61st Dr. Instream experiment. Jane’s pace was once again broken by short pauses as she sat with a hand raised to her closed eyes. Resume at 10:09.)

(Jane paused at 10:18. Without opening her eyes she took the envelope for our 52nd experiment from me. She held it to her forehead briefly then lowered it to her lap; she resumed her earlier position, her head lowered to one hand.)

(Break at 10:29. Jane said she was well dissociated. Her eyes had remained closed through both experiments. I had the feeling that she hadn’t wanted me to ask questions, particularly. When I hesitated she called for break.

(Actually this marked the end of the session, but Jane didn’t say so until we had gone through the data ourselves. We made our own connections and did not ask Seth to return to help out.

(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.

(“A framework, that seems to be wooden, with thin lines like poles.” We believe this data is reinforced by the “high ledge shape” data given later, and that it refers to my studio, wherein the page of manuscript used as object was written. Jane uses the studio in the mornings while I am working outside. Her desk faces a row of five windows, tall and narrow, and with small panes. The studio is actually a glass-enclosed back porch, second story, converted to year-round use.

(As she sits at her desk Jane looks out and down to the grass of the backyard below. The view is high and quite pretty. To her left is the kitchen roof of the apartment below us, but this is to the side and does not obstruct the view. We believe the framework mentioned by Seth is a reference to the wooden window frames, and that the thin lines like poles refers to the narrow wooden frames holding the glass panes; eight small panes make up each of the five windows.

(“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.

(“A note.” Either Seth saw the folded object as a note in itself, or he refers perhaps to Jane’s penned notes on the object.

(“The month of April.” My penciled date on the object shows I picked it up on May 5,1966. Jane said she wrote the page used as object early in the month of April, and did not throw it away until she had rewritten it a month later. In the next session Seth tells us Jane wrote the object on April 7.

(“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.

(“The color purple,” Jane said this is speculation: She wears a certain purple sweater her mother made for her on days when the studio is chilly in the mornings. She wears no other sweater in the studio; it is, also, too large to wear publicly. But Jane has no idea whether she wore the sweater on the day she wrote the object.

(“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.

(“A connection with markings and dates,” Markings can be either the typing itself on the object, or Jane’s notes and corrections in pen. I penciled in the date, May 5,1966, on the object the day I found it and thought of using it for an experiment.

(“and a connection with a horse perhaps. Some connection here, but distant.” See the interpretation of the “connection with an animal” data on page 149. In the early part of chapter five, from which the envelope object comes, Jane used the phrase “cart before the horse.”

(“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.

(“Red or blue.” I am not sure, but when taking the data from Seth I wondered whether this could be connected to the postmark data. At times it is difficult to tell. I used a period after the word postmark however in the notes, so consider the red and blue separately. Jane made the notes on the object with a dark blue or gray pen that gives the impression of dark blue. She said she felt red or blue refers to the fact that she uses two different pens in correcting manuscript—a red one and a blue one; but we are not sure.

(“A connection with a high ledge shape, as one connected with a roof, or lookout from which one can look down and away.” See the interpretation of the “framework” data on page 148. As stated, the manuscript page used as object was written by Jane in the studio at the back of the apartment. The studio is a second-floor converted porch with two sides made up of five windows each. Jane sits at her desk facing the row of windows to the west; from there she has an excellent view of the backyard and the street beyond. She “looks down and away” at grass and flowers, etc., and to her left, not obstructing her view, is the porch roof of the apartment on the ground floor.

(“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.

(“Also a small screen.” It took Jane two days to make the connection here, and when she did it was very vivid. At the end of the session she said she’d had no images while giving the envelope data. Association a couple of days later reminded her that she had indeed had one mental picture—that of a small television screen, and quite clearly. These images can be difficult to recall, particularly on the spur of the moment, and Jane has had other instances where they came to mind some time after the session.

(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.

(Two days after the session Jane found herself reading over her second draft of chapter five. Coming across the TV analogy made Seth’s data about a screen clear to her—particularly when it also reminded her that she’d had a good image of a TV screen while giving the envelope data. Had she not chosen to reread, this block of material would have been missed.

(“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.)