“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I was really excited to think that a psychologist would do his own experimentation with projection, and I wrote him. We corresponded for a while, and then in November of 1966, Gene and his wife visited us. We got along beautifully. He never made me feel that I had to prove anything, which was pretty tricky of him actually, since he wanted to satisfy himself as to the authenticity of the Seth sessions.

“You do not know it. You think it. You will not be where you are.”

“You do not know it now. When that point is reached, you will be able, if you prefer, to experience any ‘reality … illusion’ at your will, but the self who experiences these ‘reality … illusions’ will know itself as reality. There is no place for it to go, because it is the only reality, and will create its own environment.”

“Right, and in so doing the probing has been done. There is nothing to probe.”

“You cannot do less,” said Seth. “You can hardly do more.”

“To do that is to have opened an eye and to see that there is but one short step to take.”

Dr. Barnard was kind enough to write a letter to the publishers of this present book, giving his opinions and mentioning that session (Number 303). (More than this, he let me use his real name, rather than hiding behind a pseudonym.) In his letter he said: In the session “I chose topics of conversation which were clearly of tolerable interest to Seth and considerable interest to me, and which by that time I had every reason to believe were largely foreign territory to Jane. Also … I chose to pursue these topics at a level of sophistication which I felt, at least, made it exceedingly improbable that Jane could fool me on; substituting her own knowledge and mental footwork for those of Seth, even if she were doing it unconsciously. …

“The best summary description I can give you of that evening is that it was for me a delightful conversation with a personality or intelligence or what have you, whose wit, intellect, and reservoir of knowledge far exceeded my own. … In any sense in which a psychologist of the Western scientific tradition would understand the phrase, I do not believe that Jane Roberts and Seth are the same person, or the same personality, or different facets of the same personality. …”

“I’ll drop them a short note, thanking them for their interest or something. Seth can do what he wants. I doubt he’ll do anything.”

But, as often happens when I try to second-guess Seth, I was really wrong. Our session, the 339th, started shortly afterward, and almost immediately I left my body, though I had little sensation of doing so. I just found myself hovering in midair, looking down on a particular neighborhood that was obviously someplace in Southern California. Back in the living room, Seth was describing what I was seeing, but I was only distantly aware of his voice. To me it sounded far less distinct than a very poor long-distance telephone call.

As always, when things like this check out, I smile all over. I’ve never been one to accept other people’s word about the nature of things, even though at times I have accepted more than I should have. I’ve always wanted to find out for myself. No one could have been more critical about his own experiences than I have—while still maintaining enough freedom to experiment. So after this episode, I began to relax. I’d been out of my body again, and again things had checked out. How did Seth help me do this? How could he record my perceptions when my consciousness was across the continent? I was more intellectually intrigued than I can say. One thing I knew: He was pretty tricky—sending me “out” without my prior conscious knowledge of what he was planning. I do much better that way, because I don’t feel that I’m being tested, and I don’t have time to fret about results. (He’s a good psychologist, too!)

Seth admitted that he was the one who spoke to Phil. After our break he said, “The woman is grasping in a way that is disastrous to those with whom she comes in contact.” He added that the woman “would have used you as a buffer between herself and another male, and as a bargaining point, exaggerating your slightest interest. An unpleasant situation would have resulted. Because you listened to me, the probable future was changed.” Then he gave considerable background information, saying that the woman had a child and was involved with another man. “The male involved with her has something to do with mechanics.” He also said that she was a Catholic, and that her problem concerned a legal paper.

Considerably startled, she did as she was told. In that instant the headache vanished. By the next day she felt better than she had in six months. She began to take walks again and felt rejuvenated. When she told me the story, I just nodded and smiled. Quite frankly, I didn’t know what else to do.

“You create your reality according to your beliefs and expectations, therefore it behooves you to examine them carefully. If you do not like your world, then examine your own expectations. Every thought in one way or another is constructed by you in physical terms.

“If you sell yourselves short, you will say, ‘I am a physical organism and I live within the boundaries cast upon me by space and time. I am at the mercy of my environment.’ If you do not sell yourselves short, you will say, ‘I am an individual. I form my physical environment. I change and make my world. I am free of space and time. I am a part of all that is. There is no place within me that creativity does not exist.’ “