“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

He turned on a small recorder; classical music with a tinny quality swirled through the room. He bowed his dark head for just a moment then lifted it, those soft eyes now … softer and harder at the same time; his hands moved in rhythm with the music; his whole body was a marvel of motion; shoulders, head, arms, chest — his whole trunk, responding to the music. Then at his command, four silver dollars disappeared through the tabletop and he caught them underneath in the palm of his hands. Playing cards appeared and disappeared. He was in a trance of his own; so were Rob and I, watching. And in the back of his mind was the improbable hope that one day, somehow, the coins would really go through the tabletop. …

I replied, “Haven’t you ever known that someone was going to call you, just a moment before the party actually called on the phone? Or haven’t you ever known that the doorbell would ring just before it did, or that you’d meet someone you hadn’t seen in a long time just before you actually do meet?”

He raised a furry eyebrow: “I’d still rather have some really great event happen. I mean, why not?” He grinned. “Like the New York Times ad test with Seth you two did and wrote up in The Seth Material. Now that would convince me!”

“Uh,” Gramacy said. Rob laughed. And in a twinkling I’d changed into Seth. “Look” I said, “no strings, no cards hidden within cards, no bag of tricks beside me on the floor.” Smiling, hearty, Seth talked about magic and cause and effect, but at the same time he demonstrated a magic that is beyond the clever manipulation of appearances. Another personality from whatever realm had joined the party.

It’s really unfortunate and quite unusual that we didn’t record the session. Seth came through before I thought to remind Gramacy that he could record Seth, if Seth came through. But somehow in my mind at least, not recording that session added to it’s magical quality … the spontaneous psychological or psychic transformation came and went … We were sitting at the living-room table with the lamplight clear on my face; Gramacy could follow Seth’s psychological passage; see my features change, taking on ever so subtly those other contours. And Seth’s voice was jovial, booming, you didn’t have to strain to hear those words. There was no prepared message either. We hadn’t known that Gramacy was a scientist until he told us that night, and it was as a magician rather than as a scientist that Seth addressed him, telling him to trust his dramatic and imaginative flair.

Of Master Magicians
whose conjurings
feature the amazing tricks
of space and time,
produced so skillfully
and fast
that we’re dazzled with
the effects,
and miss the magical
slights of hand
beneath
the flashy gestures
of the days and nights.