“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(One thing caught me unprepared, and perhaps came close to interrupting the session. As I began talking steadily my voice began to become very dry. I am not used to speaking so steadily, although Jane later said that she too had noticed a voice stain in her first session with me, until she became more relaxed and used to the idea. Luckily there was a little wine left in one glass; as I finally became so hoarse I could hardly talk, I began to sip this, and it helped a great deal. A glass of water handy, I thus learned, will be standard in sessions after this. At one time I simply had to stop talking because my voice gave out. Jane said she was aware of this, and that the break almost snapped her out of the relaxed state she was entering.

(At my suggestion Jane began to flex her feet, then her hands. For a few moments she let her hands lay at her sides, but since there is tension in the upper arm muscles, her arms cannot lay fully relaxed upon the bed when she is flat on her back; after a few minutes she again crossed her hands, and told me later that this was more comfortable. Of course I noted that even after my suggestions, her arms did not fully relax, but I had not stressed that she would achieve any great or startling improvement; this first session was more to learn how to proceed, and during it I tentatively tried several different approaches.

(By now I had learned that she could speak under hypnosis without difficulty, a point we had wondered about to at least some extent. I thought she was in a light trance state and Jane later agreed that she was, that she felt very relaxed. Often as I spoke to her I told her she would have full memory of what transpired when the session was over. When it was over, she told me her memory of parts of the session was somewhat hazy— reinforcing the idea that she was hypnotized, if somewhat imperfectly, and that my control was not all it will be in future sessions.

(I began to tell Jane that she was now going into a deeper trance. This proved effective, I soon learned. Jane said she had no particular feeling of entering a deeper state, but when I brought her out of it at the end of the session she had a very definite feeling of rising, of leaving it to return to full consciousness.