“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Thus, I opened up several years ago to ask Rick to publish the nine volumes of The Early Sessions through his New Awareness Network, Inc. And now, I open up even more to his publication of The Personal Sessions series. As this group of sessions slowly accumulated, often as “deleted” or unpublished portions of “regular” sessions, Jane and I took it for granted that since they were personal they would stay that way. Every session is obviously personal, since Jane delivered them all, but now I’m encouraging the overall intimacy of these personal sessions to seek their own intimate freedom—and of course I know that doing this will not only help others, but me too.

Nor am I trying to justify class behavior by noting that Jane and I and our guests were much better behaved during the Friday-night gatherings in our apartment. A fine group of young friends with both similar and quite different interests than ours slowly developed, each one, each couple, dropping in at the end of the workweek to relax and talk. All knew of Jane’s abilities, of course, her growing career with its attendant publicity, but that was only a minor subject amid wide-ranging discussions. Once in a while Seth would come through—though usually only by invitation—but that wasn’t the norm by any means. There were too many other things to discuss! Sue Watkins, a dear friend who was to write several books about Jane’s work with the Seth material, lived just down the street for a while before moving to the country. (Sue’s latest, Speaking of Jane Roberts, is crowded with much frank and loving information about Jane and me that I have no room to go into here.) Peggy Gallagher and her husband Bill worked for the Elmira Star-Gazette; as a reporter Peg wrote several well-received articles about Jane and the Seth material. The Gallaghers were the best friends anyone could have, but we loved everyone. Especially as we came to realize that our having such friends made up for interactions with others that Jane and I had largely missed out on in our own earlier relationships. Valuable!

For example: In Session 510, on January 19, 1970 in Volume Nine of The Early Sessions, Seth remarked: “Now. I have been helping Ruburt. The energy that I would put into sessions has gone into some private talks to him while he slept. These have resulted in necessary insights on his part that will themselves cause the release of energy from the inner self.” And my notes follow: (For the last several days Jane has been telling me about a string of insights and revelations she has been experiencing, both asleep and awake. She feels these are very beneficial and has been putting them to immediate use. She feels she has lately realized a group of truths that she hadn’t understood before, etc.)

I’m sure that Seth and Jane, whether or not they’re together, per se, have each been more than a little amused to watch me at my labors here—but also compassionate and sharing from “where they are now.” I’m pleased to believe that they have psychically joined me as I write this introduction, and that they know I have tried to be objective. I also feel that they will be with me as I enter into this account’s final episode, one involving Laurel’s and my most interesting meeting with a group of visitors.

Finally, then: I was working on this introduction late in October 2002 when Laurel and I were visited by five members of the Houston, Texas, Seth group: Winter Calvert, Theresa Smith, Jim and Debbie Serra, and Yvette Silva. I had corresponded with a few members of the group, and Jim and his wife had visited me some time ago. The five were accompanied by Richie Kendall; he’s an old friend from the days of Jane’s ESP class—one of the New York City boys, as Jane used to fondly refer to that group. Richie had also visited Laurel and me twice last summer with Mary Dillman from his new residence in Westport, Connecticut.

We talked with our guests about many things psychic and psychological most—but not all—of the time. Theresa Smith showed Laurel and me color photographs of her very original modern art in progress, and talked about her goals. I encouraged her to keep developing. Then I showed the group some of Jane’s art and my own.

I showed our guests the portrait of Seth that I had painted from my vision in 1968, as well as my paintings of Jane both before and after her death. Some of the latter were from visions, some simply from my memory of her and what she was trying to tell me or from what I was trying to understand. I also showed our visitors several of my portraits from my own past lives, both male and female, that Seth had mentioned long ago, or that I’d tuned into through dreams. The points I stressed to the group mainly concerned my basically unconventional interests. I do some abstract art. Beyond an occasional foray, however, I no longer have an abiding interest in simple literal portraits or still-life or landscape images per se. But then, I asked, what more literal odyssey would there be than to investigate one’s own past lives, male and female? It took me a while to start thinking that way after Jane began speaking for Seth. The subject matter is endless, free of time and age and style in unique ways. And here again, I envision publishing a portfolio of my art, with the necessary text. I see Jane’s and my art as reinforcing the Seth material in quite original ways.

At the end of the first day of the group’s most interesting visit. Richie and Yvette left to return to Connecticut. Jim and Debbie and Winter and Theresa left for the Holiday Inn in Elmira, New York, 15 miles across the Pennsylvania border. At the Inn in 1997 and 1999 Laurel and I had been guests at well-attended Seth conferences organized by Lynda Dahl and Stan Ulkowski. Our rich memories of those gatherings are nourished each time we drive past the Inn on our way to the hill house. We met our guests at the Inn the next morning, and the six of us drove in our three cars to a nearby country restaurant for breakfast. Then, with Laurel driving and our friends’ cars following, we traveled up a steep and winding hill just outside the city to not only a fine view but to Quarry Farm, an old-fashioned but large and elegant wooden homestead where Mark Twain had done some of his finest writing. No admittance, private property, a sign proclaimed, so we stood in the driveway just off the road to study the farm and its open and peaceful setting. Then back down into the city and to the campus of Elmira College. Jane had lectured to a class in creative writing at the college after the publication of Seth Speaks in 1972.There on the school’s green sward stood the small many-windowed gazebo that Mark Twain had worked in during his summers at the farm; it had been relocated to the college long ago. Not surprisingly it was locked, but still easy to inspect—and also to just accept as the people of Elmira and those in the college went about their daily activities. Mark Twain had been one of Jane’s favorite writers.

While we were surveying the house I saw a young black man step off the front porch and stroll out to the sidewalk. He didn’t turn to walk up or down the street, however, as one might expect, but casually stood there and turned to look at our group a few times as we talked and took pictures. Evidently we’d bothered at least one tenant after all, to the point of sending a sibling, say, to try to see what we might be up to, if anything. Perhaps deciding that we were no threat, our observer sauntered back into the house. I never did see anyone peeking out at us, though.

Actually, outside of our own small group of friends, including ESP class members, plus the well-received articles Peg Gallagher had written for the Elmira Star-Gazette, Jane and I hadn’t stirred ourselves to become known in Elmira, even after the Seth books had begun to sell. In our own creative ways we had been loners, (as I still am) basically; our passions had been to focus on what we could learn both for ourselves and others in the long term, and especially through publishing to reach a larger audience. This became even more so for us as Jane gradually became more restricted physically because of her symptoms.

The last stop in our group’s little tour was to visit the hill house. 1730 Pinnacle Road sits on a corner lot up a modest hill on the western outskirts of Elmira. Jane and I fell for it the first time we saw it. It’s a one-story dark-green-painted dwelling with a big stone fireplace, and has a screened-in side porch and a one-car garage in back. The woods continuing on up the hill begin only 50 feet from the garage. The setting had—and has—privacy without being isolated from other homes not far away and it had plenty of room for our few possessions and work projects. That was a real treat to us.

Meeting the Houston Seth Group was a nice event for Rob and me. Jim and Debbie had driven by to meet us earlier in the summer, and we had corresponded by e-mail discussing their visit. The Houston Seth Group went thru not one but two powerful hurricanes just a month before they visited, a week apart! So we were looking forward to our visitors for several months before they arrived, and worrying about their situation as well.

On this October day last fall, as we stood in Jane and Rob’s driveway, (now my driveway also) at Pinnacle Road, Rob and most of the group started looking around the front of the house. I stood talking at the entrance of our driveway with a writer in the group.