“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.

“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.”

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.)

It didn’t seem to make any difference in the results whether Rob knew what the test envelope contained or not. One night Nora Stevens (not her real name) came unannounced. She was the friend of a friend, and had attended two sessions previously. During this period we encouraged people to drop in with test envelopes, though actually few did. (Before and after this we preferred to keep our sessions private.)

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.

The overall results of our own envelope tests encouraged us to hope that Seth was doing fairly well on the regular Instream data, too. We started these with zeal and energy.

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.

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.

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?

Apparently he was. And our own results were presenting difficulties. Dr. Instream admitted that he didn’t know how to evaluate them statistically. A hit had to have so many known odds against it before it could be credited, and it was nearly impossible to set up odds against any particular statement made by Seth.

We started all the ESP tests just before our friends the Gallaghers took their 1965 vacation. In the meantime, they took another trip, and we decided to try the same kind of experiment with them as we had earlier.

In any case, I always think of that “testing year” as beginning with the Gallaghers’ trip to Puerto Rico and ending with their Nassau trip. As far as we were concerned, Seth had proven himself. After a year’s work we wrote to Dr. Instream, ending the tests and giving our reasons. After a few more envelope tests, we ended those, too.

Actually, I’m not sorry that we took so much time for the tests, but I’m glad we ended them when we did. I’m not temperamentally suited to putting myself under fire twice a week, which is what I was doing with the attitude I had at the time. Emotionally I disliked the tests; intellectually I thought them necessary. Seth didn’t seem to mind them at all, but I forced myself to go along because I thought I should. The fact remains that in our sessions the best instances of ESP have occurred spontaneously or in response to someone’s need, and not when we were trying to prove anything. I knew I was disappointed not to get some sort of “certificate of legitimacy” from Dr. Instream. On the other hand, we didn’t ask for one; we were too burned up not to have reports on the results.

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.)

In one session, Seth gave some pointers that Rob immediately put to use. The picture is one of our favorites, and belongs to Rob’s “people series”—portraits of people we’ve never met. The inspiration for this particular painting came to Rob suddenly a few days after the session in question, and he used the techniques Seth had given in its execution.

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.