“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

For one year, twice a week, Seth gave his impressions as to Dr. Instream’s activities. These included specific references as to names, initials, dates, and places. Some of this data could be easily checked out. Dr. Instream wanted Seth to concentrate on naming a particular object, though, upon which he would be concentrating in the distant town in which he lived. It became obvious that emotional elements were more important; that activities of an emotional nature “came through” more clearly than impressions of a more neutral object. Seth did give material pertaining to objects also, but he was more apt to give specific information on Dr. Instream’s daily life.

Knowing that Dr. Instream would be concentrating on each session put me under a strain, perhaps because of my own attitude. But now I felt that I really had to have a session each Monday and Wednesday evening, come hell or high water. And even when we were alone, which we usually were, I felt that the sessions were no longer private—that an invisible Dr. Instream was an audience. We seldom missed a session before the Instream tests. But now my idea of great defiance was to miss a session, to go out and get a beer and let the psychologist go stare at his old vase or ink spot or whatever he’d chosen for that night’s test.

With no idea of how we were doing, I couldn’t have cared less, finally, what Dr. Instream was concentrating on. The tests just became time-consuming, cutting down on the amount of theoretical material we could receive. Once more I wrote the good doctor, suggesting that he not spare my feelings in case the data was just wrong. If so, we were wasting his time and our own. Again he wrote of his continuing interest and suggested we keep on. But he would not say we were doing well, fair, or poorly, and he gave no reports on the many specific details given.

Now we could concentrate on the Seth Material. Freed from the test structure, the sessions were ready to go places. We were in for many surprises. If I’d had more faith in Seth’s abilities and my own, I could have saved myself a lot of trouble. Actually, even while we were conducting the ESP tests, other things were happening and not only in sessions.