“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Still without looking at the paper I’d chosen as object, I sealed it in the envelopes. Then, with my eyes closed, I picked up the section from which the object had been taken, groped over to a floor-to-ceiling bookcase, and placed it on a high shelf where I would not see it.

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.

For a minute this data stumped us when we went over the test results. Then Rob looked at the full newspaper page.

“A mission with unforeseen consequences … 1943 … Illia, and perhaps an F and R … Something happening all over again, as a commemoration … A connection with something green, as a meadow … a child … Januarious.”

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.”

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.

Each point was correct. We went over the material with the Gallaghers on their return. But there was much more. Seth had correctly described a nightclub they’d visited, then went on to mention that there had been a “nuisance there.” Bill and Peg wholeheartedly agreed. They’d been annoyed by a loud-mouthed English tourist. So, obviously, had others. The Englishman insisted upon whistling with the band. Seth also said that there were eighteen shrubs out in front of the nightclub, but Bill had to admit that though there were shrubs out front, he hadn’t thought of counting them.