“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.

The above impressions referred to the test object itself. Now here are some about the page from which the object was taken. Seth said, in consecutive order: “A method of disposal … Something in the vernacular … Gubatorial.” (I was after the word “gubernatorial” here, but as usual Rob recorded it the way I pronounced it in trance.)

Now I think that this is an excellent example of the way extrasensory perceptions are sometimes received. Sales are a method of disposal, yet verbally the final connection isn’t as concise as we would like. There’s more than just the idea of conciseness involved, though: such answers are also just different—unexpectedly so, and they make us consider old objects or ideas in new and equally valid ways. I’ll have more to say about this sort of thing later in this chapter.

“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.

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.

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.

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.)

“Now, oils suggest the earth. Let that medium stand for the physical appearance of permanency in any object, the physical continuity of any given human form in a painting. Let the transparent oil colors represent the constant renewal of energy that always escapes the form.

“Now, this information is from an artist who always used sienas for initial flesh tones, with a suggestion, very lightly, of violets. These were then very cleverly built up with a transparent ocher which he had, and a particular green, muted. The top complexion tone lay on this lightly, as if a wind could blow it away.”