“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(In a dimly lit atmosphere we sat at the living room table by the windows. Jane asked Seth for signs of his presence; Seth had talked about giving such signs, soon, in the last session. The session began at about 9PM and lasted until the regular time of 10:30. Jane spoke to Seth in a quiet voice for some little time, but no results were obtained; nothing out of the ordinary was noticed by either of us. Jane then suggested that I speak to Seth, since I was used to doing so; her hope being that by going into trance on her own she might contact a survival personality—namely, Blanche Price.

(Jane began to breathe more deeply. Her head continued to nod back and forth. I felt that my speaking, steadily but not rapidly, gave Jane freedom and reassurance to do more than she might have otherwise, and she later agreed to this. Now Jane’s left hand began to move; it lifted and slapped lightly at her right hand, on the table, and did this repeatedly. I thought this meant Jane had established some kind of contact or feeling with Blanche, or the idea of Blanche, and she verified this later. Her breathing was now heavier, and she began to let up on the head nodding.

(Jane’s head did not remain still however, but began to tip to one side at times; then she would right it again while seemingly making efforts to speak. She said the left hand movements were weird to her, and felt subjectively “like a dead hand.” As though it were necessary almost for Blanche to go through the experience of being ill once again in order to make contact through Jane, and to even approach the death experience itself. At no time, Jane said, did she “see” Blanche, or feel disembodied herself; yet she felt at the same time that contact had been made. If play acting was involved, Jane said later, it was on a completely subconscious level where she would possess no egotistical knowledge that such was transpiring.

(Jane said later that this worked well, and evidently helped her across several rough spots—the feeling or urge to cry passed after a few moments. Jane now seemed to be in a deeper trance, and began to try to speak. Her voice was quite low and I often asked her to repeat herself. She would first whisper or mouth what she wanted to say, then with quite an apparent effort would finally manage to get audible, understandable data through at my urging. “This is Blanche,” was one of the first things she said, after I had deliberately called her Jane for reassurance, while thinking she had probably made contact with Blanche, and was somewhat unpleasantly involved in a sickroom episode.

(After the session Jane and I together put down what we thought she said; as we talked Jane recalled more and more. The following words are the gist of it, without necessarily being in the right order. Practically all of this was given after Jane made several attempts to speak clearly enough so I could hear; and much of it with her head inclining to her right, toward her shoulder, as though she was extremely relaxed and in a deep trance:

(Jane later said she thought she said more, but actually we do not believe we missed recalling much. We don’t know if it can be checked out. Her trance, Jane said, was quite different than the usual Seth trance, and a few times, particularly during the crying attempt, Jane felt she might be approaching an unpleasant experience, as has happened a few times in the past. Again, Jane felt that in making contact, Blanche had to go through the last, and so unpleasant, stages of her physical life. After the session we wondered what part Jane’s knowledge of the circumstances of Blanche’s final days might have played here.

(At no time was Jane aware of Seth as a personality, and neither of us saw any signs of him or from him. One of my concerns when Jane asked me to speak to Seth at the beginning of the session, was whether my speaking would bring on a regular Seth session, but this didn’t develop; and the method gave us both confidence for like experiments in the future. Jane said my speaking was a great help for her, and did act as a protective device. My own idea was for Jane to make emotional or feeling contact with Blanche, without whatever emotions she encountered becoming too intrusive and so interfering with any data we might get.