“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.

“But that is a discussion of the me here and now.”

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. …”

On May 3, 1967, Peg and Bill Gallagher dropped in for our regular Monday night session, and as we sat around chatting, I told them about a letter I’d just received that amused me—and sort of outraged me at the same time.

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!)

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.

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.

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.

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.

One day I met Mrs. Brian, a former student who dropped out of class due to illness, who told me she had read a newspaper article about this present book that appeared in the local paper. It contained a few excerpts of the Seth Material, and a reproduction of Rob’s painting of Seth. Mrs. Brian had a terrific headache while reading the article; suddenly she thought she felt Seth’s presence. An inner voice, presumably Seth’s, told her that she had been feeling sorry for herself, that she must stop brooding over her health at once, get up, and go out for a walk. If so, she would improve at once.

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.

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.

Demonstrations of ESP in sessions have always had a purpose: either to help increase my confidence or train my abilities, to illustrate a point made in the material, or to offer information to someone in need. It’s easy for me to forget my earlier feelings that Seth should prove himself; easy for me to forget that I, too, insisted on my “wonders,” and on several occasions even denied the evidence of my own senses out of the mistaken belief that I was somehow being more scientific that way. I will say that I always highly respected the Seth Material, and recognized the scope and daring of some of the concepts it contains.

“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.’ “