“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In early February, Rob wrote to Dr. Ian Stevenson, who was connected with the Department of Neurology and Psychology at the University of Virginia. Dr. Stevenson was interested in reincarnation, and we had just read about his work. Rob also sent him copies of a few sessions, including some of the information we had been given about our own past lives. According to this, we lived several existences in the very distant past, including one in Denmark three centuries ago when Rob and I were father and son and Seth a mutual friend. Our last lives were in Boston in the nineteenth century.

“Oh, great,” I said to Rob. “Do I act any nuttier than usual?” Rob solemnly assured me that there had been no change in my behavior. Actually he had been watching for such signs, and so had I. But Dr. Stevenson’s well-meaning warning did throw me for somewhat of a loop, even though we had read the same cautions ourselves in some of our psychic books.

In a way, Dr. Stevenson’s letter came at an unfortunate time. It had been impossible to keep the sessions absolutely secret. Eventually some of our friends were bound to come around on a Monday or Wednesday evening, and hear the odd voice from outside the door as Phillip did just before we wrote Dr. Stevenson. As a result, Phil began to attend occasional sessions. I’m using the entity name that Seth gave him, since his family doesn’t understand his interest in psychic phenomena—a situation we’ve encountered more than once. Phil lives out of state but travels to Elmira every six weeks or so on business.

I took Phil at his word, but I also thought that coincidence could have explained the episode. Just the same, my spirits rose. Then a few days later, Dr. Stevenson’s letter came and I went into a slump. “See if Seth has anything to say about the letter,” Rob said. I agreed, but when I became tense it was difficult to relax enough to have a session. I skipped our next scheduled session as a result, but I’d recovered my equilibrium when the next Monday came.

Seth had quite a bit to say! “A fond and exasperated good evening,” he began. “The exasperation comes because your good psychologist almost undermined the confidence I managed to give Ruburt in our session with your friend, Phillip. I tried to build Ruburt’s confidence, and some stranger tore it down. His intentions were of the best, but I suppose that I must now feel obligated—and I do—to go into the matter of mental and emotional stability and any dangers to such stability that might be involved here.

“I feel a strong responsibility for you and for any results coming from our communications. If anything, the personal advice I have given you both should add to your mental and emotional balance and result in a stronger relationship with the outside world. … I do depend upon Ruburt’s willingness to dissociate. There is no doubt that he is unaware at times of his surroundings during sessions. It is a phenomenon in which he gives consent, and he could, at any time, return his conscious attention to his physical environment.

“Please be frank, as I do not like this hanging over our heads,” Seth said. Then he went on to give us some information concerning entities and the various personalities that compose them. Rob was particularly curious about the differences between entities and personalities.

For a while I think I spent half the time trying to psychoanalyze Seth and the other half trying to analyze myself. Caution is one thing, but sometimes I went overboard. Even so, Seth said that my strong ego was an asset to our work when I didn’t overdo it, since it kept my whole personality on an even keel and allowed me the psychological strength to handle and develop my abilities.

One small but amusing incident came up that illustrates my attitude during those early months. We have a lovely large apartment that has, unfortunately, a tiny closet-sized kitchen. When we moved in to our present apartment, the kitchen held a stove and a small refrigerator that didn’t begin to hold all our food. We got a larger one for foods that we didn’t use every day, and this second refrigerator I put in our huge bathroom, a great old-fashioned tiled room that’s easily five times as large as the kitchen. I knew that this was a crazy place for a refrigerator, but after a while I became used to it.

In early spring Rob came down with several annoying gumboils and one night he asked Seth how he might get rid of them. Seth immediately launched into a rather hilarious discussion of the unsanitary aspects of a refrigerator in the bathroom. He made a few kindly but definite statements to the effect that we should know better, and suggested that the appliance be moved into the kitchen, where it would hold all our refrigerated food. If so, he assured Rob his gumboils would disappear.

Sometimes we followed his council, to our advantage. Other times we didn’t go along, for reasons of our own. In 1964 we went househunting, for example. Seth suggested we purchase a particular house. We liked it very much but it was in poor condition. Seth might very well be right, we thought—and we might be happier if we bought the house—but we just weren’t willing to take the chance.

During the first six months or so of the sessions, our cat, Willie, began behaving in a most unsociable manner. A few times he began to hiss and spit quite madly just before sessions. One night he really startled us. We were getting ready to begin, and Willie was sleeping in the bedroom closet. Suddenly he ran out of the closet, fur on end, bolted through the living room, and hid behind the curtains. Once he nipped at my ankles as I was speaking for Seth, and in trance I dragged him half across the room while he hung on to the bottom of my slacks. Rob had to shut him in the studio.

So many developments occurred in the following months that it is difficult to cover them all. We were both to have our first out-of-body experiences, or “astral projections.” Our experiments in what Seth calls “Psychological Time” helped us develop our own psychic abilities. The quality and scope of the Seth Material constantly grew, and we were to make some contacts with others in the field of parapsychology. We were shortly to discover that Seth was indeed clairvoyant, and that my own training as a medium had only begun.