“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.

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.

This session ran fourteen typewritten pages, and is so of one piece that it’s difficult to give excerpts, without including a good bit of background information. Here are portions of the last half of the session. Earlier, Seth and Gene had been discussing reality, and Gene had commented that existence was “kind of a lovely colossal joke.” Seth answered that “it is no joke. It is a means for the Whole to know Itself.”

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. …

Besides the session, Rob and I and the Barnards had a great time discussing out-of-body experiences.

Shortly after their visit, my book, How to Develop Your ESP Power, finally appeared in the bookstores. I began to get some mail, though I was hardly deluged. One of these early letters was responsible for my next out-of-body trip during a Seth session.

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.

Rob sent a copy of the session to the two brothers. They sent back a tape in which they evaluated the information. Later they signed a statement which is in our files. Seth’s information about their house was right in every particular, including the data on the area, and the shape of the seacoast there.

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.

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.

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.

Since we had read little psychic literature when the sessions began, everything was new to us. It wasn’t until much later that we discovered that some of Seth’s concepts had appeared in esoteric manuscripts dating back thousands of years. As our own knowledge increased, however, we found that in some critical areas Seth’s ideas departed from those generally accepted in much spiritualist and metaphysical literature.

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.

I’d like to close this chapter with excerpts from Session 329 recorded in March 1967 for a teacher-friend’s high-school group. Though Seth is speaking to teenagers here, the message is meaningful to each of us.