“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane began speaking in trance, while sitting down and with her eyes closed. Her voice was deeper and stronger than usual, her pace good. Eventually her eyes began to open.)

(9:27. Jane said the voice felt deep to her, and swept her along. Resume at 9:35.)

(At 9:45 Jane took the double sealed envelope from me for the 82nd experiment and pressed it to her closed eyes in a horizontal manner briefly, before gesturing with it.)

(Jane indicated the point of the flap on the back with a finger, her eyes still closed.

(Break at 9:55. Jane had spoken rapidly, her eyes closed, the envelope held up to her face practically the whole time. She had one image which will be mentioned in place. Seth returned and helped us out on a few connections, but in the meantime we made our own.

(The “object" was, as stated, common black pepper. I shook a small amount of it into an envelope, sealed it, then placed this between the usual two pieces of Bristol board and sealed the sandwich in another envelope. No writing was involved. Jane said that as she held the envelope to her head she did not hear anything move within; nor did she shake the envelope, etc.

(“A miscellany of united objects or images, of small patterns like dots but larger than small dots. Light and dark, rather highly contracted.” Excellent data, and Jane did everything but name the object as pepper. I almost called a halt to the data here, on impulse, but then decided to see what else Seth came up with.

(The pebbles data could also stem from the tin can of pepper used to fill the plastic shaker with which I filled the envelope. Jane located the pepper can in the kitchen. It was a McCormick product. On it were the words “Pure Ground Black Pepper," etc., pebbles and ground being related.

(“The number 14.” We don’t know for sure. The plastic shaker I used contains no markings except the letter P. The McCormick can contains the words “4 Oz.”. Jane thinks it possible it took us about 14 weeks to acquire the set of dishes of which the salt and pepper shakers are a part.

(We acquired the dishes through trading at a certain supermarket and obtaining so many pieces weekly, through coupons. It took some time. Jane is quite sure we traded there at least three months.

(“J A B.” Seth helps out on this later. Our interpretation was not right. We thought the J B might refer to Jane’s initials, but in this case couldn’t account for the A since Jane has no middle name.

(“Connection with a squirrel or small animal," We were partly correct here. Again, Seth helps out later. We thought possibly the animal reference concerned our occasional use of pepper acorns, which we used to grind ourselves. Jane has remarked that these remind her of bird feed, which we put out on the roof beside our kitchen windows. Squirrels also use the bird feeder.

(“Something stands on rocks. A face.” Here Jane had an image—that of her face, small, as she stood on some rocks and near water. She was not sure in the image, that she was near an ocean, particularly. The face she saw was not that in a photo, but herself, alive. Seth explains this later.

(This connection is not as remote as it might seem: Jane spent some time in Baltimore before we were married 12 years ago. Even so that location has strong personal associations for her today. Both of us have been to Los Angeles, CA, several times, but Jane has not been to San Francisco.

(“The impression of fine, finely patterned edges. Blacks and whites.” Again, the pepper itself. When Jane opened the double sealed envelopes, she found the pepper had settled in a loose line at the bottom of the inside envelope; thus it formed a fine patterned edge, which also consisted of black and lighter colored grains even though the pepper is called black, in actuality less than half of it seemed to be black, literally.

(“Writing on one side. The back, I believe, and something relating to images on the front. On the back I mean handwriting. Steps. Ruburt thinks of an old photograph of himself, with his dog. And connects this with his father.” Again Seth helps out here after break. We think this data stems partly from the image Jane had of herself earlier, and that two ideas are mixed up here. There is a Baltimore connection, in that Baltimore is mentioned on the pepper can, as explained; also, Jane has a photo of herself taken on a set of the typical white Baltimore stone steps, with her dog, Mischa, now dead.

(“A village. Perhaps mentioned by name.” We are not sure. On the upper can is the slogan “House of McCormick" and Jane wondered if she enlarged house into village.

(“A word like peck or pack.” At first, we thought these might be attempts to get at the word pepper. Then Jane remembered something of the old rhyme: Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, etc.

(As we finished going over the data, Jane then remembered that as she was giving it she was going to say something about the implication of motion being connected with the object; for reasons unknown she didn’t give voice to it. Perhaps the motion referred to my moving the shaker as I put some pepper in the envelope, etc.

(Jane resumed at 10:15.)

(This would be a different photo, it seems, than the one of Jane and her dog in Baltimore.)

(“I’ll ask this question now, and you can develop it as you choose: Can you help Jane contact survival personalities?”)