“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane was especially logy before the session, and remarked that she didn’t feel much like having one. She decided to go ahead, however. I felt somewhat tired also. It was a warm and rainy night, which didn’t make us feel any more active.

(Jane began speaking while sitting down and with her eyes closed. Her pace was slow and she used many pauses, some of them long. A few of these will be indicated.)

(Break at 9:26. Jane was “out” as usual. Her pace had remained very slow. Many of the pauses during the delivery lasted for over a minute. Her eyes began to open finally, and she smoked a cigarette and sipped iced tea. She said she thought the session would be short.

(Jane now began to give the Instream material for the 64th experiment after break. As usual she sat with a hand to her closed eyes. Her pace actually speeded up a bit comparatively. Resume at 9:34.)

(At 9:23 Jane took the envelope for our 55th experiment from me without opening her eyes. She pressed it to her forehead briefly, then lowered it to her lap but kept the other hand to her eyes.)

(Break at 9:58. Jane was well dissociated, she said. She wasn’t aware of the traffic noise for instance, even though the windows were open. Her eyes remained closed through both experiments.

(See the tracing of the envelope object on page 171. I found it in a drawer of my desk about an hour before the session and decided to use it for the object on the spur of the moment. I opened up the match folder and removed the matches, then sealed it in the usual double envelope. I knew Jane hadn’t seen it for at least a couple of years, and after the session she confirmed that it had been longer than that.

(I picked up the matchbook in a restaurant, Mother Goldsmith’s in Saratoga Springs, NY. Jane has been familiar with the place since childhood, and on our infrequent visits to Saratoga we always stop in. I dated this particular matchbook on the inside when obtaining it—August 1963, which was before these sessions began in December 1963. The book is printed in black on a dim yellow—as Seth calls it—cardboard stock. All the copy on it, except for Nate Goldsmith’s name beneath the caricature of him, is in this dim yellow against the black background.

(It wasn’t until Jane and I began to study the envelope data that we realized it referred to more than one visit to Saratoga on our part. This immediately complicated things. Interpretations became elusive indeed, and part of our knowledge that two visits to Saratoga were involved was subjective only. Had we realized this by the end of the session we would have called Seth back to help out. As it was we didn’t appreciate what had happened until the time came to write these notes. Another complication is that while we cannot pin down all the data, we feel that most of it is quite legitimate.

(I will indicate below where we believe the two Saratoga visits are referred to in the envelope data. The first visit was in August 1963, the second was in the summer of 1964. On both occasions Jane and I were on our way to York Beach, Maine, on vacation; both visits to York Beach played a part in these sessions, and exact dates can be found in appropriate sessions. See Session 9 in Volume 1.

(The connection between the envelope object and our two visits to Mother Goldsmith’s is strong enough, in that Jane and I ate there both years. We saw the same hostess both times also—a girl Jane went to school with in Saratoga. We did not see Nate Goldsmith or his wife on the first visit, and the reasons we did not see either of them on our second visit are given in our data interpretations.

(“A connection with a spade.” On our second visit, in 1964, Jane and I were told that Nate Goldsmith had died. We do not know just when he died, but believe it was after our first visit. Jane did not know the Goldsmiths intimately, merely to speak to. Also on the 1964 visit we were told the restaurant had been, or was being, sold.

(“Four. Connection with a meeting.” This too took place on the 1964 visit. Jane feels subjectively sure that here the meeting between us and her father, Del, and his third wife, is referred to. The meeting was arranged by mail beforehand. Jane and I planned to meet Del and his wife, who were already camping at Saratoga Lake, there, and spend a few days with them before going on to Maine. This we did.

(“The impression here of something underground. I do not know whether to interpret this as a burial or not.” Possibly the death of Nate Goldsmith; we learned about this on our second visit. Jane, or Seth, has used the underground idea several times now in connection with death.

(“A path in a particular direction to be taken.” Jane feels this applies to the address of the restaurant on the object.

(“and crisscross lines in the shape of a cross.” Jane said this data goes with the earlier underground and spade data, and is a symbolic reference to the death of Nate Goldsmith. Seth has used the cross idea before in indicating things ended, etc.

(“The impression of movement, and some impression of a machine, perhaps an airplane.” Jane said this refers to our automobile trips to Saratoga, the object being obtained on the first of these in 1963.

(“Two men and two women.” I asked Seth to elaborate on the four people standing up data. Two men and two women were involved in the meeting referred to earlier: Jane’s father Del and myself, and Jane and Del’s wife. This on our second visit.

(“Perhaps a J and a G.” I asked Seth for initials of the people at the meeting. The J can refer to Jane, but not the G. The initial G of course shows up on the object itself, twice, in Nate Goldsmith and Mother Goldsmith’s.

(Jane resumed at 10:10.)

(End at 10:11. Jane was “out” as usual. She said Seth felt affectionate at the end of the session. She held the session tonight not only because she didn’t want to miss it, but because under similar circumstances in the past the results have been good. She had confidence that if she really shouldn’t have a session Seth would either call it off entirely or make it very short.)

(261st Session, May 23,1966. Tracing of the pencil drawing of Jane, used as the object in the 56th experiment.)