“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Last night in ESP class, Jane had an experience with a personality who called itself, and the rest of us, Sumari. This afternoon I dropped in to talk about this incident with Jane & Rob; in the course of the conversation we decided that I should bring the tape of that class to their apartment this evening, stay on for the session, and record it and type it up.

(It had been snowing all evening and I had some trouble driving in from Pine City. Besides that, my recording of the Sumari personality was poor and I had to stop at Fred and Pete’s [class members] to get their tape, and I didn’t arrive at Jane & Rob’s until 9 PM. We played the two tapes—Jane was especially interested in the chant that preceded the Sumari’s short speech—until 9:20. Jane had written this chant down during an Alpha experiment in class; when she started to read it to us, she suddenly wailed the words as loudly as I have ever heard even Seth’s voice go:

(Jane’s spelling & scansion.

(I thought that Jane was uneasy about the whole experience last night, but as soon as she felt Seth around, we all seemed to relax more. Rob poured us beers and the session started at 9:35.)

(A reduced version of the on-the-spot drawing I made of my vision after 10PM on Tuesday, November 23, 1971, as I sat typing in our second apartment across the hall from where Jane was holding her ESP class. My crude drawing can’t begin to reproduce the delicate, shimmering and transparent beauty of what I briefly saw floating before me.)

(Rob paused. “Well, no; but a couple of times I felt that I was right on the verge of accomplishing more with it, but I couldn’t quite bridge the gap to bring it about. The first thing I thought of was Jane’s father, though—I didn’t actually see him, but I was telling Jane that at times I thought I did see the shape of the back of the head —I did associate that with his head.”)

(“I thought about Al’s father’s death last night,” Rob said, referring to Al Oberg, a class member whose father had died the Thursday before Jane’s father had. “What’s the connection?”)

(9:59. During break, we discussed what had been said and then somehow got to joking about a reincarnational drama-scene that Rob and I had played out a few months ago, in which he had apparently been a teacher of mine and an exasperatingly thorough record-keeper. Jane had. just made a remark that sent me convulsing with laughter when Seth came through again, loudly and emphatically:)

(“What were you going to say about the connection between Jane’s father and Al’s father and this?”)

(Break at 10:30. Jane came out of trance and told us that she knew Seth had said something about astrology because she had had a conceptual experience, which she simply couldn’t put into words, involving the positions of the planets and the vastness behind their symbolism. We discussed the idea of Sumari and what might be their connection with the “class dreams.” If class could correlate their dreams, we might be able to find a common theme or purpose, with each individual remembering his own part in it. Break lasted for a half an hour and Rob was wondering if the session was over when Seth resumed at 11:02.)

(“Well, I was thinking a minute ago about the incident with Jane and Dr. Wilt in Sayre.”)

(Jane came out of trance at 11:20 and we sat and talked about what had been said. During the past hour or so, however, the first syllables of a word—“grund...” or “gruna...” had been going through my head, and I had the idea that it was related to these “families”. “I wonder what some other family names are,” I remarked. “I keep getting this word like Grundoon or something.” At that, Seth was abruptly there.)

(“Wait a minute, this is me,” Jane said with a dazed look.