“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

One day while we were still up to our necks in tests, I saw an Associated Press article that really surprised me. Dr. Eugene Barnard, a psychologist then at North Carolina State University, came out publicly with a statement favoring astral projection. He said that he had propected his consciousness out of his body, and that no hallucination was involved. The article also gave details concerning his academic research in the field of parapsychology.

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.

We had a fascinating session one night, lasting several hours. Not until it was over did I realize what he’d been up to—now that’s a good psychologist! Gene had questioned Seth in what I guess you could call “professional philosophical jargon,” making frequent references to esoteric Eastern theories with which I was totally unfamiliar. Gene has his Ph.D. from the University of Leeds, England, in experimental psychology, and taught at Cambridge. He also had an excellent knowledge of Eastern philosophy and religion. Yet Seth not only took him on, but in some way I still don’t understand, he used Gene’s own terminology and jargon to beat him at his own game—and with humor and grace.

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. …

“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.”

In here, because of the specific material, Rob began to wonder if projection was involved. “Are you at the location now?” he asked.

“Then a bay effect to the left. The land is like this, you see, not straight. The land here curves and juts out again.” Here again Seth gestured broadly to indicate the shape of the seacoast. He also said that the family had a strong foreign connection, though the name was not particularly foreign, and made some other remarks about the family’s history and members.

Again, this experience suggested all kinds of questions concerning Seth’s and my relationship in an out-of-body episode. Presumably he stays in my body, while I go out of it, but this is a simplification, I’m sure. We’re still accumulating information on such questions, both through sessions and through work on our own.

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!)

This experience and my new confidence obviously made other later developments possible. Other strangers wrote, some urgently wanting help of one kind or another. While Seth insists that help comes from within, he did offer excellent advice to a few, along with correct clairvoyant impressions of their environments—probably to let me know we had the right person more than anything else.

Our Monday and Wednesday sessions, where Seth develops the theoretical material, are still private, although a guest may drop in occasionally. Seth sometimes does hold a session for my ESP students on class night, and in class he deals with the practical application of the material.

Actually the only person who has attended our private sessions with any regularity is Phillip. Seth has given him information concerning his business dealings, correctly predicting the behavior of certain stocks among other things; and Phil is keeping record of Seth’s percentage of “hits.” The time ranges for some of the predictions cover several years, but Seth has been correct about a large number of items that Phil has been able to check. Seth doesn’t make a habit of giving advice in sessions, though: he insists that people make their own decisions.

We really never know what is going to happen in a session, and one night Seth really surprised us. That night Phil turned up, unannounced as always. He told us he’d received a raise. With a comic shrug he left the amount up in the air. When the session started, Seth promptly named the amount to the dollar, smiling broadly. Then Phil asked Seth if he knew anything about a voice that he’d heard in a local bar.

During our first break, Phil explained: A month earlier he’d been speaking to a young woman in a local bar, when he heard a clear, loud, male voice say, “No, no,” very emphatically. It seemed to come from within Phil’s head. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before, and he was so startled that he muttered a quick excuse to the woman and left the bar.

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.

After this, Seth proceeded to tell Phil where she lived, though he didn’t give a specific address. “She lives in … the third or fourth house in the middle of a dead-end street, in the northeastern section of town, but west of the establishment in which you met her. …”

All of this was highly interesting to Phil, who had no idea where the woman lived, and knew nothing about her except her name and probable age. Since he was to be in town the next day, Phil went back to the bar and started asking questions. He found out the woman’s address from the bartender and drove down the street to discover that Seth knew what he was talking about. She lived in the third house before the end of a dead-end street, in the northeastern section of town, but west of the bar. She was Catholic and had a child and a male friend who was a car salesman rather than a mechanic.

Obviously, according to Seth, we can change the future. As he told Phil: “At no time are events predestined. With every moment you change, and every action changes every other action. I am able to look from a different perspective, but still see only probabilities. On that particular evening I saw a probability that was not attractive. You and I changed it.”

Exactly a week later Bill called us, sounding very nervous. He told me that something very strange had happened, and since he was still upset about it, he thought he’d discuss it with me. Instantly I remembered my own experience, and told Bill to wait while Rob got my notes, so I could check them as Bill talked. Bill told me that exactly a week before he had been awakened suddenly. Seth stood by his bed, fully three-dimensional, looking just like Rob’s painting of him. He shook Bill’s shoulder and disappeared. Bill told his mother at breakfast the next morning, and wrote a report out for us.

First of all, I thought I had been in a crowded room in my out-of-body experience, but Bill was obviously in his room, alone. Another thing, he saw Seth smoking a cigarette; I smoke. Did Bill hallucinate Seth’s three-dimensional image? If so, he did this at the same time that I felt I was with him. And he felt Seth shake his shoulder while in my experience I shook it.

Several people have told me that Seth communicated with them through automatic writing, but Seth denies any such contacts, saying that his communications will be limited to his work with me, in order that the integrity of the Seth Material be preserved. According to his statements, however, he has “looked in on” friends occasionally.

We asked Seth about the incident. In this case, he said, Mrs. Brian had used him as a symbol of her inner self, or supraconsciousness, to deliver help and healing influences as well as advice. The experience helped the woman to use her own abilities, and the idea of Seth enabled her to activate her own healing forces. Seth told me not to concern myself. Apparently he is delighted to inspire others in such a fashion and serve as a focal point for their own creative energies.

He absolutely refuses to let people use him as a crutch—this goes for me, too—and maintains that the Seth Material itself provides a means by which people can understand themselves better, reevaluate their reality, and change it. Despite the sessions held now and then to help particular persons, and despite their incidents of extrasensory perception, the sessions remain focused primarily on the material. It is here we feel that the real significance of the sessions rests.

For one thing, Seth does not agree on the existence of one historical Christ, though he grants the legitimacy of the Christ spirit—as you will see later in this book. While he sees reincarnation as a fact, he places it in an entirely different time context, and reconciles the theory with the idea of “simultaneous” time. Perhaps more important, he describes reincarnation as only a small part of our entire development. Other equally important existences occur in other non-physical dimensions.

To our knowledge at least, the inverted time theory and the system of probabilities are entirely original with the Seth Material. Seth’s idea of the nature of pain is also quite divorced, I believe, from current metaphysical thought. He views suffering as simply an attribute of consciousness and an indication of vitality, considered alarming only by those areas of identity that still fear death as an end.

But from now on I’ll let Seth speak for himself. I’ve chosen excerpts dealing with the subjects at hand. In some cases, Seth gave demonstrations to make his point. In the chapter on health, for example, I’ve included excerpts from some readings for specific people. I’ve followed the same procedure with the data on reincarnation. To explain his theories on the nature of physical reality, I’m using excerpts from a session in which he really demonstrated that he knew what he was talking about—if an apparition in the living room can pass as a legitimate approximation.