“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.

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.

Just a few days before we received Dr. Stevenson’s letter, we had an unscheduled session with Phil present. We gave him paper and pen to write down any questions he might have, but Phil never got a chance to write anything down. According to him, Seth answered each of his questions in turn as Phil formed them in his mind. Phil wrote and signed a statement to this effect.

This was the first sign of any kind of telepathy or clairvoyance in the sessions. Phil was really astonished, and so was I.

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.

“For one thing, Ruburt’s ego is extremely strong. His intuition is the gateway that relaxes an otherwise stubborn and domineering ego.” At this, Rob looked up and laughed. “The intuitive qualities, however, are not frivolous and the personality is well integrated.” Seth went on to describe dissociation, saying that I was always aware of my surroundings to some degree in sessions. “It is true,” he said, “that a state of dissociation is necessary. But because you open a door, this does not mean that you cannot close it, nor does it mean that you cannot have two doors open at once, and this is my point. You can have two doors open at once, and you can listen to two channels at once. In the meantime you must turn down the volume of the first channel while you learn to attune your attention to the second. This process you call dissociation.”

Later elaborations on the above statement gave us a pretty fair idea of what inner processes go on so that Seth and I can make contact. This involves the construction of a “psychological bridge” that will be explained later in this book. At this point I’d been speaking as Seth for about forty minutes, and he recommended a rest period, saying: “Sometime between now and twenty-five years of laying your doubts at rest, I would like to go into some other matters that I have been trying to tackle for several sessions. But take your rest, pussies.”

I used to envy Rob his viewpoint of the sessions. He could see and hear me as Seth and I couldn’t. Now during break I questioned him again. I hated to have to depend on someone else to tell me what was going on, but I had learned one thing: I couldn’t be Jane and Seth at once. For Seth to come through I had to stop such mental quibbling—at least temporarily.

The session lasted until 11:30 P.M. Rob was reassured by Seth’s statements about my ability to handle dissociation, and by his responsible attitude. I was, too, but I kept thinking of the remark in Dr. Stevenson’s letter. “Of course, Seth said that everything was okay,” I said. “What else could we expect him to say?”

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.

Finally, Rob asked Seth if he knew what was wrong. The reply was that Willie’s very acute senses picked up Seth’s presence just before session time. He told us that the cat’s behavior would change as Willie became more accustomed to the situation. A month or so later, Willie became himself again. Now he pays no attention to the sessions, and even occasionally jumps into my lap when I’m in trance.

During this time Rob had a recurrence of back trouble, though far less severe than before. Seth devoted several long sessions to an analysis of Rob’s condition and explained the reasons for the symptoms. They disappeared without medication, and we think that the knowledge Rob gained through these sessions was responsible. Earlier we had purchased a Kennedy rocker because of Rob’s back. He used to sit in it to take session notes and for a while it was the only chair in which he was comfortable. He no longer needed it when he recovered, and I got into the habit of using it. Much later, when I finally consented to sit down during sessions, it would be my favorite “Seth” chair.

We quickly learned that Seth regarded physical symptoms as the outward materialization of inner dis-ease. He emphasized the importance of suggestion and the dangers of self-pity. He did tell us then that when one of us was ill, the other was not to offer excessive consolation and thereby reinforce the idea of sickness. In later sessions he would give some excellent material on maintaining good health. This will be covered in Chapter 13.

I’ve devoted some time and space to the early Seth sessions so that the reader could become acquainted with part of the material as it was given to us. Some of it seems so rudimentary to us now that it’s difficult to recall the amazement we felt at the time. It was the continuing sense of discovery and intellectual curiosity that led us on, and that finally resolved my own doubts.