“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane now opened the double sealed envelopes and examined the object, as she always does at break. At first it had little meaning for her, and as is often the case she said the data obtained pertaining to it was incorrect. True, the data was not as specific as it has often been, but it did contain a number of valid points. Some of these were subjective on our part.

(Seth helped us out with our interpretations after break, as sometimes happens. Whenever possible we prefer to make as many connections between the data and the envelope object as we can on our own. Our purpose in conducting these experiments in this manner is to see what Jane, or Seth, can pick up about a concealed object that bears some kind of emotional charge related to us personally. To this end, envelope objects are often deliberately chosen by me with emotional involvement in mind, since Seth has said many times that his abilities have an emotional basis; this primary emotional basis is then disciplined and given shape by the intellect.

(Wendell’s letter of May 26 is two typewritten pages long, and at the moment we do not plan to include a copy of it with these notes. If necessary we will do so; in the meantime the letter remains on file with other envelope-related material. Other background material may be necessary to fill in the relationship between Wendell, myself and our friends discussed in the letter, and this will be included in our interpretations of the envelope experiment data. Some geography is involved also.

(“A building, more like an office building than a residence. Something like the Star-Gazette building.” Was the restaurant in which the reunion was held located on the ground floor of a building like the Star-Gazette building here in Elmira? A large brick two-story building typical of many we remember in the metropolitan New Jersey-New York City area. This is only speculation on our part. Later note RFB: Newspaper comics.

(“Some connection with a February event.” Wendell’s letter of May 26 was in answer to a letter I wrote him last February. I do not have a copy of my letter, but am sure it was written in February because Wendell discusses my references to snow and poor weather. Our weather last winter was quite peculiar—we had no snow at all until the massive three-day storm of February 1, one of the worst in local history. Seth has more to say about February in answer to my first question.

(“It seems a definite connection with your studio.” Beside the connotations mentioned just above, the envelope used as object was kept in the studio, at the back of our apartment, for five months, or from its receipt in late May until now, October 3,1966.

(“A bottom or middle drawer, next to something financial.” The object was not kept in a drawer of my desk in the studio, but lay beneath a pile of papers on a shelf of the desk, perhaps a foot above the desk drawer which contains our financial records.

(“And a connection with an older man here.” Jane and I felt reasonably sure here that this referred to the boss of the studio at which both Wendell and I worked in 1941-3. His name is Jack Binder, and he is in his 60’s now—perhaps twenty years older than the crew of artists he had working for him. Seth agreed with our interpretations after break.

(Jane was interrupted here, unfortunately. One of our cats jumped up on her lap as she sat in trance. She did not leave trance, but her delivery was disrupted. Her eyes remained closed. I left my chair to put the cat in another room.)