“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This session will actually report two separate events, lumped together for convenience. Both involve table tipping, and include one Seth session.

(Part one: A table tipping session on Wednesday, November 22, 1967, in our living room, with the following: Jane and Rob, and Claire Crittenden and Carl Watkins. Highly successful, the best achieved up to that time, with seemingly a full levitation almost accomplished.

(The table seemed to have a mind of its own. Jane at once called upon the table’s “inhabitant”, A A, to help us out, and we received help aplenty. The table, the one usually used and belonging to Ruth Klebert, one of Jane’s ESP students, had been repaired less than a week ago by me; it had been damaged to the extent of losing a couple of its three legs by its violent movements in a recent ESP class.

(There were of course all manner of in-between motions given by the table also, hard to describe in words. The pressure manifested, of course, held our intense attention, since this is so diametrically opposed to our usual unthinking acceptance of the gravitational force. Jane requested A A to manifest pressure often, and usually A A, or the table, obligingly did so. Everything seemed to work together in perfect order—table, our moods, etc. If one chose to call a full levitation 100%, then our evening could be called 90% successful.

(The table would rock back and forth beneath the touch of our fingertips when the pressure was requested; as it did so it would begin to feel increasingly solid and heavy; the creaks and groans in it would disappear and it seemed to become one indivisible unit. The pressure would rather quickly build up until members grouped around it—usually standing—would have to really bear down to level it out again. Once it finally groaned dangerously and I feared some part of it, possibly the top, was about to break.

(Needless to say, when Carl or whoever was measuring pressure on the scale, the other three took pains to see that they were not subconsciously exerting a heavy pressure on the other side of the table,thus forcing a stronger response across the tabletop to get the legs back on the floor. Such checking was easy to do; nevertheless conscious deliberate checks were constantly being made to make certain opposing pressures were not unwittingly being exerted. Most of the time our hands touched the table so lightly that it could move quite freely beneath them, seemingly of its own volition. This steady checking has the added advantage that it serves as a protection against any possible hallucination [although this would have to be a mass effect, and highly unlikely]; the checking in a deliberate manner was a good method to keep one’s feet on the floor, so to speak, even if the table was acting contrary to gravity.

(When we asked for a full levitation, it seemed the table did its best to achieve this, getting all legs off the floor except the last tiny point of contact of the third leg; it would then go in circles beneath our hands, or begin to dance about, eventually. I cannot recall whether pressure was apparent at such times. I am tempted to say that it probably was not as strongly present as at other times when we frankly requested pressure in order to experience it. At just about all times one or more of us was talking to the table, exhorting it to go on, to better its performance, in most positive tones.

(The table was active until after 1 AM. One other distinctive movement involved a seeming vault into the air while Carl held the table at arms length. This tipped the top vertically to the floor, and the other three present touched the top lightly. At first the table seemed to move Carl around in circles, continually being ahead of him, in that it ended up by twisting Carl’s arm awkwardly behind him; this made it very difficult for Claire, Jane and me to keep contact with the top. At the same time Carl insisted that he was not deliberately twisting the table this way around himself. The twisting was rapid.

(Carl, being big and strong, could hold the table as he did, with but one hand, the arm extended straight out, for some little time. At the same time we requested levitation. Abruptly the table, still in Carl’s grasp, vaulted up toward the ceiling of our living room, very rapidly, until it was upside down to the floor and beyond our reach, except for Carl, who still held on. Carl said he had not consciously made the maneuver, and he appeared as surprised as we were. Later he told us he was afraid the table would either crash into the ceiling—since Carl was tall enough—or would hit a nearby wall where several of my paintings hung.

(It is of course possible to balance any object, large or small, and this has led Jane and me to experiment a bit with the table in question. It was soon discovered that by balancing it at a certain angle with the fingertips, then exerting a downward pressure, one can have an illusion of a force from beneath holding the table up with one leg off the floor. However, as far as we can tell this is not the force we have experienced when a leg will refuse to return to the floor.

(One must exert the downward pressure in a manner directed away from the body while experimenting, in order to maintain the balance and center of gravity, and at least when experimenting this necessity to push down and away from oneself is quite noticeable. When the table is performing well it seems that a direct downward pressure, applied to the edge of the tabletop, is required to overcome the force. The direction of this downward push is quite different, we believe at this stage, from the experimental down-and-away thrust. But more study is required here, and with this knowledge in mind, we will try to more accurately assess the table’s performance at future sessions.

(Jane and I cannot say exactly who was at the table when it broke, although we know that neither of us was, nor was Curt Kent, who sat to one side drinking beer. We believe that five people were at least touching the tabletop, and perhaps more. The breaking of the table left us delighted and appalled—me especially; and it took me several hours on two succeeding days to repair the table. So much force was used to shatter the table leg that a nail two and a quarter inches long, that I had used in my previous repair bout, was bent at an exact right angle. This nail remained embedded in the detached leg. Other smaller nails in the same leg were pulled through the detached leg and remained in the central pedestal.

(There was no doubt that Seth wanted to come through. The evening’s events had set the stage most thoroughly. I have no idea of the reaction, subjectively, of some of the witnesses to what must have seemed a very strange happening indeed. Personally, I believe that only the Gallaghers, Claire, Pat and myself had witnessed a session. This left as new witnesses Peg’s brother Dick and his wife Carol, Danny,Curt, Doug and Carl; though Carl and perhaps one or two others had at least heard mention of Seth.