“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.

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

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.

And what about the Instream tests? First of all, I kept waiting to hear what Dr. Instream thought about my two out-of-body episodes. And he simply never mentioned them. To me this was terribly disappointing. The results had checked out, whether or not they could be considered scientific. If these didn’t convince him that something was going on, I didn’t see what would!

For one year, twice a week, Seth gave his impressions as to Dr. Instream’s activities. These included specific references as to names, initials, dates, and places. Some of this data could be easily checked out. Dr. Instream wanted Seth to concentrate on naming a particular object, though, upon which he would be concentrating in the distant town in which he lived. It became obvious that emotional elements were more important; that activities of an emotional nature “came through” more clearly than impressions of a more neutral object. Seth did give material pertaining to objects also, but he was more apt to give specific information on Dr. Instream’s daily life.

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.

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.

Seth told Dr. Instream that he would be moving to a Midwestern university by the end of the year, for example. I have no idea if Dr. Instream had any indication of this ahead of time, but he did move when Seth said he would, and to a Midwestern university. We never learned how many correct impressions even of this sort checked out. Enough of them would have added up to something. So would a high enough percentage of hits on specific names and dates and so forth, statistics or no.

Seth did say, however, that Rob’s picture using the color-building technique is a portrait of the artist in question. (See illustrated section.) He also said that Rob would do other paintings of both the artist and his environment, including possibly the artist’s studio.

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.