“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The 76th envelope experiment was held tonight. The object was torn by me from pages 11 and 12 of the New York Times’ first news section for Sunday, November 6,1966. See the two previous pages. I chose the object at random by a method which will be explained later. Suffice it to say here that I did not see the object until Jane opened the usual double-sealed envelopes after giving the data. I did however know the object came from the New York Times. Results were good.

(We found our cat, Catherine, in a next-door backyard after dark on Sunday evening. His right pelvic joint was broken. We had been away Sunday. Upon our return that evening at supper time, Jane began to go outside to look for the cat perhaps every fifteen minutes. She does not usually do this. As it happened our washing had been hung in the basement the day before because of rain.

(I chose the object in the following manner. In my studio was a pile of old newspapers. Most of them were of the New York Times, daily and Sunday. I removed a few local papers from the stack. Backing up to the pile I pulled out a section without looking at it and tore off a portion of a page. I folded this behind me until I was sure it would fit between the regular double Bristols, and into the double envelopes.

(After the experiment was over Jane opened the envelopes, and I picked up the newspaper from which the object had been taken. It turned out that I had chosen Section One of the New York Times for Sunday, November 6,1966, and from this had torn the object from pages 11 and 12. It also developed that I had leafed through this section of the paper in a casual way—without remembering the pages in question, 11 and 12—and that Jane had never seen it.

(Seth did not return to help us out; in the meantime we made our own connections. Section One of the Times was many pages thick, as is usual on a Sunday. Therefore Jane and I arbitrarily decided to limit the interpretations and connections to the object itself, and the one page—11/12—from which it was torn. These two items are on file along with the front page of the section.