“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.

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.

“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.”

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).

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.

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.)

We knew that Nora was a secretary in a hospital office that had to do with the purchase of drugs and supplies, but that she had nothing to do with patients, their records, or medical procedures. I didn’t know she’d brought an envelope. She slipped it to Rob after the session began.

After the session we opened the envelope. It contained a patient’s record sheet, a page from a pad that Nora had picked out of a wastebasket in another office. At the bottom corner were four numbers in a row, with other numbers on the top by the patient’s name, Margaret. Her hometown also began with an M; she was from out of town. A hospital stay is certainly unpleasant, often turbulent. Seth also gave other impressions concerning the woman’s background, but we couldn’t check these out.

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 agreed with him. But after that, Rob often made up several test envelopes at once, shuffled them, and then chose one just before a session.

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.

I didn’t feel this way in the beginning, but I was really furious that he didn’t tell us the results of the tests; all those hours seemed to be going down the drain. One night, really angry at not hearing from him, I did go with Rob to a nearby bar—only to rush home at the last minute so as not to miss the session!

All told, a total of forty correct impressions were given in the three sessions held while Peg and Bill were in Nassau; more, actually, since many impressions consisted of several points. But so much work is involved in such an experiment! Memory is fallible, so we always tried to get anyone involved to write up their reports at once for easier and more reliable checking.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

Here are a few excerpts from that session: “In a portrait,” Seth said, “do the same exercise as given earlier: [that is], imagine the individual as the center of all life, so that when the painting is completed, it automatically suggests the whole universe of which the individual is part. Nothing exists in isolation, and this is the secret that the old masters knew so well.

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.

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.

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.