“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“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.”

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.

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.

“He might,” Rob admitted. “But the fact is, we’ve received plenty of letters that I could have used since then. We also did work in handwriting analysis; I could have used one of those samples. I could have used something older than you are—as I’ve done before. I could have used anything. No matter what we use, Seth still has to describe a particular item. And those impressions weren’t general; they could only refer to that specific hand print.”

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?

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.

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.

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.