“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

This test brought several questions to mind at once, though. How had Seth picked up the information about the entire page, when only a small section of it was in the test envelope? Had some kind of projection on my part been involved, back to the studio bookcase? Seth hadn’t first given impressions of the envelope object itself, then neatly moved on to deal with the entire page; he had shifted back and forth between the two, as if viewing both at once. And why had he not confined his data just to the envelope object?

“He would not be content simply to give the details on the snatch of paper. This is a fairly automatic tendency of his mental life. We use it, I hope to advantage, in our sessions in other ways. … In the tests, however, we tried to utilize this characteristic, since we could not deny it. Ruburt’s abilities are what I have to work with and through—besides, of course, my own. So we used this tendency here to enlarge the picture and bring in further details that gave you rather respectable data … and in a way that was fairly natural to Rubert.”

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.”

This test was funny, really, because Seth was doing beautifully on his own. Then he threw the ball to me, and I nearly fell flat on my face. The envelope item was a bill of Rob’s, dated July 15, 1966. The session was on August 1. I’d been with Rob at the lumberyard when he got the bill. (See the illustrated section).

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.

“An oval shape or eye shape, that is, this kind of an eye, inside of a rectangle or triangle, you see.” (According to Rob’s notes, I pointed to one of my own closed eyes. The salesman, as mentioned earlier, specifically mentioned his poor eye in connection with his portrait, and his glasses.)

All in all, Seth gave twenty-four impressions. Each of them did apply, though some were not as specifically connected as others. For example, Seth said: “Connection with black, symbolic of death; and with a tournament, again symbolic, as of a crossing of swords.” We believe that this was a reference to World War II, when the salesman who waited on us had his portrait done as a soldier. Another example was this: “Numbers … perhaps 01913.” The bill did have numbers on it, and in a series that began with 0 (this seemed unusual to us), but not in the order given by Seth. One series begins with 09 (not 019); and the last two digits, 1 and 3, do appear by themselves on the front of the bill.

Yet sometimes I’d get discouraged even over good results. One test had pleased me no end at first. It was our 37th, held in the 237th session on March 2, 1966. The target item was a print Rob had taken of his own hand a week earlier, when we were reading some books on palmistry. Seth’s impressions couldn’t have been more concise. I went around the house with a smile on my face just thinking of it for days afterward.

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.

One of our favorite topics of conversation that year was when will we hear from Dr. Instream? For months on end we would hear nothing. Perhaps, we thought, he wanted to give us no reports until the experiments were finished. If so, why didn’t he just tell us? When finally the suspense was too much for me, I would write: were we getting any hits or weren’t we? Dr. Instream always assured us of his continuing interest, told us to go on with the tests, and said that he had no evidence yet strong enough to “convince the hard-nosed psychologist.” But that was all. He said nothing about the numerous names and dates, the visitors or letters mentioned in the sessions. Was the data all wrong? Partially right? We never found out. He never told us.

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.

Seth seemed to pick up things that had particular emotional meaning for Peg and Bill. For instance, he included among other impressions, “a commemoration of a murder … a statue …” It developed that the Gallaghers had passed a statue, a memorial to Sir Harry Oakes who had been murdered in a sensational, well-publicized case in 1943. Peg was so curious about this that she even questioned a cab driver on his knowledge of the murder events.

Very shortly after the sessions began, Rob started to see visions or images. Some were subjective, but others were objectified—three-dimensional, or nearly so. Some were of people, and Rob began to use them as models for his paintings. Now our living room is full of portraits of people we don’t “know.” Seth has said that some depict ourselves in past lives. One, used in this book, is a portrait of Seth in the form in which he chose to appear to Rob. (Since then, a student and a friend of ours have both seen Seth as he appears in this picture.)

Rob has a strong visual memory. Once he sees such an image, he retains it and can refer back to it at will. My visual memory is poor, in contrast, and so is my eyesight (I have no depth perception). Rob is a professional artist, an excellent draftsman and technician. Yet in sessions, Seth has given Rob excellent advice and information on the techniques and philosophy of art. This strikes us as really funny, since I paint as a hobby, with a stubborn lack of perspective. Rob used to try to teach me perspective, but the lessons just wouldn’t take. I’ve never studied art, and my paintings are rather childish in execution, done with raw color. Yet Seth told Rob how to mix and use certain pigments, and Rob has added the information to his repertoire. Seth says that he has no artistic ability either, but questions artists who have entered his own field of reality.

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.

Seth did say, however, that Rob’s picture using the color-building technique is a portrait of the artist in question. (See illustrated section.) He also said that Rob would do other paintings of both the artist and his environment, including possibly the artist’s studio.

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.