“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

For the next eleven months, the Seth sessions dealt mainly with test data of one kind or another. At 9 P.M. as usual, Seth would begin with the theoretical material in which we were increasingly interested. At 10 P.M. he gave impressions for Dr. Instream, and after that Rob gave me an envelope if there was to be such a test that evening. If we did have one of our own tests, then we’d sit up after the session, trying to evaluate the results. By then it was usually past midnight, and we would be exhausted.

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.

In my studio was a pile of old newspapers. Most of them were of The New York Times, both daily and Sunday copies. Shortly before the session I removed a few local papers from the stack. Then backing up to the pile, I pulled out a section without looking at it, and tore off a portion of a page. I folded this behind me until I was sure it would fit between the regular double bristol and into the double envelopes.

This procedure left me knowing only one thing about the object: that it was from some section of The New York Times, date unknown. After the experiment was over, Jane opened the envelopes containing the test object; then I went back to the studio, and from the hidden section I picked out the page from which the object had been torn. It turned out to be pages 11—12 of Section One of the Times for Sunday, November 6, 1966.

All of this referred to an article dealing with a Dominican seminary founded in Aldeia Nova, Portugal, in 1943. We believe “Illia” an attempt to get at “Aldeia.” The given date was correct, and the article goes on to tell about a young priest, Father Fernandes (F and R—the abbreviation for “Father” is Fr.), who was on a mission in this country to get funds to modernize the seminary. He was also described as organizing a pilgrimage to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary celebrations at Fatima, which is only ten miles from the seminary. The article states that the seminary includes, among other things, its own farm, vineyards, and vegetable and fruit gardens. We think that the “green, as meadow” impression referred to these. The “Januarious” connection doesn’t seem to be related, yet it is highly important because for me personally it had a strong religious connotation: one of my favorite grade-school teachers was a nun, Sister Januarious. The article speaks of the three children who saw the apparition at Fatima, and Seth mentioned a child.

We asked Seth about these points in a later session, and got some very interesting answers: “A portion is always connected to the whole of which it is part,” he said. “From the torn section, then, to me the whole [page] was present, and from portions of the whole, the whole can be read. With enough freedom on the one hand, and training on the other, Ruburt, speaking for me, could give you the entire copy of The New York Times from a torn corner.

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).

Up to this point the impressions had come through with no concern on my part. I was in a deep trance. Then Seth said: “The feeling of something hanging over, threatening or overhanging, on the upper half of the object, and dark.” As I spoke these words for Seth, a rift seemed to open up—a doubt as to the information’s interpretation. I knew that Seth wanted me to narrow this down myself, and that this was part of my training.

I had the feeling of something very heavy hanging over me. Was this to be translated into an object like, say, a heavy roof over my head, or to an emotional feeling that “hung over me”? I didn’t know—and at that point I couldn’t figure it out. The correct specific connection wasn’t made. Seth threw me another: “Something bright and small also, beneath this overhanging or threatening portion.” Here again, left to my own devices, I couldn’t work my way to the specific data we wanted.

Yet Seth was trying to lead me to the word “roofing.” It was in the heading of the bill, on the upper half. See how correct and yet ambiguous that unfinished impression was—“the feeling of something hanging over, threatening or overhanging, on the upper half of the object, and dark.”

The second impression that I was supposed to complete (“something bright and small beneath this overhanging or threatening portion”) was to lead me to the word “roller pan,” which also appeared on the bill beneath the word “roofing.” A roller pan is small, bright, and shiny, and the one Rob purchased that day had been a shiny aluminum color.

Here Seth’s impressions had been quite literal, as if the words on the bill were coming to life and being described as objects instead of as words describing objects. Later I was to do much better when Seth left some impressions up to me, but this kind of training was invaluable. Even though I didn’t do a very good job, we learned something about the nature of perception, which was Seth’s intent. This test made us suspect that all impressions, extrasensory or otherwise, are initially nonverbal and nonvisual, more like pure feeling that is only later interpreted in sense terms.

We tried all sorts of things with the envelopes. In The New York Times test, Rob himself didn’t know what was on the test object. He didn’t always know what the test object was, in any case, and sometimes he didn’t even know that a test would be held! For example, occasionally friends would come unannounced to a session and bring their own test envelope. This was just handed to me in the middle of the session, without my knowing beforehand whether or not a test would be held. Sometimes Rob would use such an envelope at once; at other times he would save it for a future session.

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.

I was doing the dishes when a drawback suddenly occurred to me. Rob was in the living room. I went in. Slowly. “I bet Dr. Instream would throw out the results of that hand-print test because we both worked on palmistry the week before,” I said.

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!

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.

He was obsessed with statistical proof for the existence of telepathy and clairvoyance, and hoped that we could produce it. At first it seemed tremendously exciting to me to be a part of such an endeavor. But as we continued to read everything we could get our hands on, excitement turned to bewilderment. As far as we could tell, the existence of telepathy and clairvoyance had been scientifically proven time and time again by Dr. J. B. Rhine at Duke University, and demonstrated by others such as Croisset, a psychic, working with Professor Wilem Tenhaeff at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. The work of Harold Sherman and other psychics certainly added circumstantial evidence at the very least. Was Instream throwing out all of these results and countless other evidence gained in parapsychology laboratories throughout the world?

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.

“One of the attractions of your portrait of me is that it automatically suggests an unseen audience to whom I appear to be speaking. Not a formal audience, but unseen listeners who represent humanity at large. The unseen is there. The figure manages to suggest the universe of men and the world that holds them, yet nowhere do these appear.

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.

Though the sessions continued as usual, we found ourselves having other experiences then, like Rob’s visions, that also developed out of the Seth Material in one way or another. And as if to stress our new sense of freedom and further add to my confidence and training, Seth was to send me to California during a session, while he and Rob talked in the living room of our apartment in Elmira, New York. So much more fun than trying to tell the contents of sealed envelopes! This time complete strangers were involved in an experience that would really satisfy my seemingly endless search for proof after proof.