“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The objects for the 57th envelope experiment were two leaves taken from our poinsettia plant. The plant is an old one, and one of our favorites. We see it every day of course but I was sure Jane wasn’t aware of these two specific leaves separately. The plant also has an interesting history, which will be brought out later. I taped the leaves to one of the two pieces of Bristol used in these experiments, sandwiched it against the other piece, then sealed the two in the usual double envelopes. Note that the word “top” is penciled on the back of the Bristol; this was done by me after the experiment, but before Jane saw the objects, as will be shown later.

(Jane always sits quietly for a few moments after leaving trance until she is fully oriented. This gave me enough time to once again see that she held the envelope in the same position relative to the floor. I called her attention to this, then marked the outer envelope “top”. Next I marked the inside envelope the same way, then the two pieces of Bristol the same way as Jane watched. The two leaves were sandwiched between the Bristols. Note the top marking in pencil on the back of the object, as indicated on the tracing on page 189.

(Seth goes from round to oval, which is more specific as far as the leaf is concerned, and from square to rectangular, which is more specific as far as the rectangular shape of the piece of Bristol to which I had taped both objects is concerned. The bigger of the two leaves is fairly large as far as the overall size of the piece of Bristol is concerned.

(“Two horizontal lines, rather widely separated from each other.” Since Jane had held the envelope to her forehead in the position above indicated, it can be seen that the “spines” of the two leaves, taped to the Bristol, would be roughly horizontal to the floor and thus to her vision. Provided Seth gives this data in our terms in such cases. We wondered if by horizontal Seth, or Jane, could possibly mean parallel, since the leaves are quite parallel to each other on the Bristol.

(“A small starlike shape, perhaps in the lower right hand corner, holding the object this way.” By now Jane had lowered the envelope to her lap while giving the data, and held it with a short edge up as explained. See my indication of this by use of the word top on the back of the tracing on page 189. I determined this as explained low on page 193. With the object held in this position, it can be seen that the smaller of the two poinsettia leaves would be in the lower right hand corner or the lower left hand corner, depending on whether the piece of Bristol to which the leaves were taped had the leaves facing toward Jane or away from her.

(I now asked Seth to name the object: “I have the impression, holding the object this way” [gesture in the same fashion as above], “of a rectangular object, a card that is connected with a picture”, resulted in Jane having a mental image here. She saw, she said, the rectangular shape of the Bristol to which I had taped the two leaves. She also had an image of something darker in the center of the rectangle, and interpreted this as a picture instead of “something real.” Upon seeing the object, Jane realized the dark areas of the leaves matched the dark areas she had seen mentally, yet the image hadn’t been sharp enough to see as leaves; it came through in a generalized picture interpretation instead.