“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

SESSION 290

(Perhaps ten minutes before the session began, I showed Jane an article I found in the New York Times for October 3,1966. She read it, then I clipped it for future use. It concerns a study of animals in dreams, conducted by a psychologist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

(Neither Jane nor I had expected any such quick response to the article, nor had we asked for such before the session.)

Tonight’s material will take us even further into a study of reality. Read the session over well.

(However, Seth has done as well with objects quite separated from the personal emotional life of Jane and mine. It doesn’t matter, either, whether Jane has ever seen the object before; or whether she saw it ten minutes before the session, or five years ago.

(See the tracing of tonight’s envelope object on page 71 and the notes on the next page. The empty envelope used as object was mailed to me last May 26,1966, by an old friend, Wendell Crowley, and contained a letter detailing a reunion of a group of friends, all artists, that Wendell and I worked with in 1941-43. The letter was not in the envelope but was kept separate by me for reference after the session. As I suspected, some of Seth’s data referred to the contents of the letter rather than the envelope object itself.

(“The photograph connection is strong [pause] but I do not believe the item is this precisely.” [Pause.] Seth tried to help Jane discriminate here, as he often does. Tonight’s object of course is not a picture or photo, but an envelope that contained a letter about people who make pictures. Also, I was taking pictures of Jane last week, as explained. Thus it can be seen how all such related data, even though separated by much time, comes together in these session experiments. This particular chain of association was not anticipated by me when I picked the Crowley envelope as object for tonight. The two studio settings—the studio I worked in with Wendell Crowley in 1941-3, and my present studio, are separated by as much as 23 years.

(Seth called for break after the second question, taking me by surprise. Usually I can ask more questions, and attempt them without being leading about it. I owe Wendell a letter, and may ask him to clear up some of the points mentioned in the data, and by Seth after break. It is however difficult to explain briefly in a letter just why such questions are necessary, and so Jane and I usually forego trying. But any additional information obtained will be attached to this session at a later date.

(See the 286th session for Seth’s discussion of these envelope experiments—why and how he presents the data, etc.

We will shortly end the session.