“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

All during this time I was working at the local art gallery in the afternoons. Mornings I spent on my ESP book, writing up the results of our experiments. We still hadn’t told anyone what we were doing, except our friend, Bill. In fact few of our friends even knew what we were up to until the book was out. Now I wonder why we were so secretive, but at the time it seemed much better to keep the world with all of its questions out. We had enough of our own to consider.

“The study of time will teach you much about the nature of fifth dimension also. Our imaginary wires composed of solidified vitality are fluid, I hope you understand this, even while they are solidified. For solidity is illusion.”

Rob asked several other questions, and the two of them, Rob and Seth, chatted back and forth for three quarters of an hour. About the voice, Seth said: “Ruburt’s voice is an experiment. The immediacy of our sessions would be enhanced if more of my personality could come through. I could go on happily, you might say blithely, for hours, but I shall not. I am not some old fogy. Now and then old Frank Withers comes through simply because he was the latest independent materialization and is used to taking things upon himself. I have not assimilated him completely, but you can believe me, I intend to.”

He was referring, of course, to some reincarnational data he had given earlier. Eventually we learned that Seth, Rob, and I were part of an ancient entity; this will be discussed in chapters 14 and 15. Seth was also to say later that this past relationship was partially responsible for our communications.

Again, on reading the notes we were fascinated by the material, particularly since Seth told us that he was going to explain these Inner Senses more fully, and teach us how to use them. He was as good as his word, for as you will see shortly, he did give us instructions and we were to have all kinds of new experiences as we followed them. We didn’t know that this information was geared to our own level of understanding and quite simple in comparison with the elaborations that would follow.

Talk about psychic explosions! Our first Ouija board session had been on December 2, 1963. By the end of January we had twenty sessions and some 230 pages of typewritten material. We knew that the voice change was significant, of course, but we didn’t realize that the power behind the voice was the more important issue. We saw that the sessions had a kind of order, but its significance escaped us. Actually, the structure provided continuity and stability, but also was flexible enough to nurture latent developments of which we were then completely unaware. Within it my own training as a medium would take place safely.

At this point, there were several courses we could have taken. We could have told no one what was happening, we could have contacted a spiritualist group or we could have informed the parapsychologists. We definitely decided not to tell any of our friends or relatives, at least for the time being. The spiritualist groups would have been out in any case, because of my views at the time on religion in general. But the ESP books we’d read all advised that anyone having such experiences contact a qualified psychologist or parapsychologist.

As a result of Seth’s instructions, both of us began to have some clairvoyant experiences on our own, and we thought we should write to someone who knew more about such matters than we did. Besides, there was that pressing question: Was Seth part of my subconscious? Could the psychologists tell us? So we decided to contact a parapsychologist who would have a knowledge of ESP and psychology.

The next few chapters will deal with our efforts to be “scientifically responsible,” to “test” Seth for ESP. We didn’t really come to any overall decision, but I think that I was driven by the need to make all of this intellectually or academically legitimate. It was, of course—but I had a lot to learn.