“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Once again a crisis situation has come about. It’s now 8:30 PM. At about 7 PM, we were eating supper and watching Buck Rogers on TV, when Jane had another panic attack. This one was more extensive. It also took me a bit to realize that it was starting to show itself in the form of hallucinations or disorientation. Right after she’d finished eating, Jane began to ramble, talking about making impossible verbal rituals that she had to carry out before she could eat her ice cream for dessert. These periods were contrasted with examples of lucidity: “I’m going to make it,” although such periods were far in the minority compared to her ramblings about performing these rituals before she could perform any meaningful physical act like eating dessert. I cannot really explain what she said; it was too rapid and varied, and I had no notebook handy. She tried to make sense out of uncommon sense data. At one time Jane thought she was on the commode in the bedroom, and began to pull up her blouse. Another time she thought she was in her writing room while I did the dishes.

(I was pleased at the way the session was going—and indeed amazed that Jane could manage to pull it off at all, given her circumstances. She said no more, just smoked. The TV was on, without sound. The cats slept beside the waterbed in the living room. The room was lit with a soft yellow glow.

(I moved her in her chair over to the dining room table where we eat breakfast and watch TV. “That’s a good thought,” she said. Then: “I’m going to pretend I’m getting up in the morning. Can you turn the TV on a little?” I did—to Alec Guinness in the excellent TV movie, Smiley’s People, on channel 7. Once again I thought Jane looked like she might want to cry, but the moment passed. Now I sat on the opposite side of her, and she leaned away from me. “All I can say is, make believe you’re getting me up.”

(9:46. I moved her back to the other table. The TV was turned up. “I’m trying so hard to get back over there,” Jane said, “in a certain fashion....”

(10:15. By now my wife had thrashed back and forth in her chair—not violently—telling me often that I had to help her; she certainly acted disoriented. “Don’t bother writing now,” she said, but when I stopped nothing came of it—no crying, or even talk. I moved her chair to the spot at which I sat at the card table, as she directed. A minute later I moved her back to her usual place at the dining room table, again as she directed. Silence. The movie on TV’s channel 2 was a bloody tale of youths being killed one by one by wicked, deranged men, near monsters, in dark summer woods.