“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Although my confidence had risen with the two out-of-body episodes, I felt that I was putting Seth and myself on the line with each test session. I never knew whether or not we would have an envelope test. Often I was afraid of having a session for fear we’d have an envelope test and the results just would not apply. (This never happened, incidentally, though the impressions given were not always as specific as we would have liked.) Actually I didn’t care what was in the envelopes—I just wanted to know if Seth could tell us, and I wanted him to be absolutely right each time. My attitude was bound to have an effect. Now I wonder that Seth was able to do anything with me at all in those days, but most of the time he managed to do very well indeed.

“There were other issues, having to do with Ruburt’s own characteristics. Now it is true, generally speaking, that material of an emotional nature actually has a stronger vitality and is easier to perceive. Beyond this, however, Ruburt has no love for detail” (Seth smiled) “and will always use it as a clue to see where it leads him.

About the tests in general, Seth said: “I was teaching him, and I went along with his natural interests and inclinations. The antagonism he had for testing came not from the idea itself, as much as from the idea of focusing upon detail for detail’s sake. Only when you had that kind of a test did he become antagonistic. In extrasensory perception—as in so-called normal perception—the natural inclinations of the personality dictate the kind of information that will be sought from any available field of data.

“There are many areas of knowledge in which any given individual is uninterested. He will not bother to use [even] normal perception to obtain it. I give Ruburt access to large fields of focus. I help him change the energy that he uses in perception into other directions, to turn it inward. I make information available to him. Then, according to his basic characteristics, he uses the information.”

Rob had purchased two four-by-eight-foot pieces of Masonite and a roller pan. The salesman who waited on us became quite talkative when he learned that Rob was going to use the Masonite for paintings. He told us that a European artist had done a portrait of him while he’d been a soldier in World War II. Somewhat humorously, he described how the artist had drawn his face as though it were symmetrical and without blemish, while actually it was quite asymmetrical with an impaired eye. The salesman also wore glasses.

Here are some of Seth’s impressions: “Four square, or four and four square.” (We thought this was very good. Rob had the two pieces of Masonite cut in half so they’d fit into our car. This gave him four pieces, each four-foot square.)

I agreed with him. But after that, Rob often made up several test envelopes at once, shuffled them, and then chose one just before a session.

And what about the Instream tests? First of all, I kept waiting to hear what Dr. Instream thought about my two out-of-body episodes. And he simply never mentioned them. To me this was terribly disappointing. The results had checked out, whether or not they could be considered scientific. If these didn’t convince him that something was going on, I didn’t see what would!

I didn’t feel this way in the beginning, but I was really furious that he didn’t tell us the results of the tests; all those hours seemed to be going down the drain. One night, really angry at not hearing from him, I did go with Rob to a nearby bar—only to rush home at the last minute so as not to miss the session!

After the session Rob told me he was quite certain that I didn’t consciously possess such knowledge—that my mind “didn’t work that way.” Rob had never tried this particular method of building up color tones in portrait work, and it is this technique he used in the painting idea that “came to him” a few days after this session. Later Seth added to this information. We are still accumulating material on art, art philosophy, and painting techniques.

Seth has dropped some hints as to the identity of the artist who is passing on this data to him. According to what he’s said so far, the artist was a fourteenth-century Dane or Norwegian, and was known for his domestic scenes and still lifes. We have been told that his name will come in future sessions, along with other information on art.

In the past, Rob’s portraits were representations of personalities involved with us personally through association or past life connections—as far as we know. Some of them still have to be identified. Lately, however, the range of the portraits has been extended. Rob did one of a young man recently, for example (see illustrated section). He had no idea who it was. Later one of my students, George, picked out the painting as a portrait of a personality called Bega, who communicates with him through automatic writing. Seth corroborated this, and said that Bega is one of his own students in another level of reality.