“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“You and your suggestions,” I countered. By now I was really having second thoughts. We’d never been to a medium. We’d never had a telepathic experience in our lives, never even seen a Ouija board. On the other hand, I thought, what did I have to lose? (It wasn’t until much later that I remembered that another of Rob’s suggestions had launched me into fiction in the first place.)

So we began. We settled on the Ouija board first, because it seemed the least complicated of our various experiments. Our landlady found a board in the attic and we borrowed it. Actually both of us were a little embarrassed the first few times we tried the board. My attitude was, “Well, let’s get this out of the way so we can really get down to the things we’re interested in, like telepathy and clairvoyance.” No wonder our first attempts were failures.

We were surprised that the board worked for us. I thought it was a riot, two adults watching the pointer go scurrying across the board, and we didn’t take it too seriously. For one thing, of course, neither of us particularly believed in life after death—certainly not conscious life, capable of communicating. Later on, we did learn that a man with the communicator’s name was known to have lived in Elmira, and died in the 1940’s—that took me back a bit. But we were much more interested in finding out what made the pointer move than in the messages it gave.

The next time we tried a few days later, Frank Withers said that he had been a soldier in Turkey during one life, and insisted (through the board) that he had known Rob and me in a city called Triev, in Denmark, in still another life. Dates and locations were given, though it was made clear that Triev no longer exists.

Then, on December 8, 1963, we sat at the board again, wondering whether or not it would work. It was a comfortable evening, warm in the room. Snow fell past the windows. Then suddenly the pointer began to move so quickly that we could hardly keep up with it.

“Oh, hon,” I said, rather disgusted. “Besides, what purpose would he have? If there are spirits, they must have better things to do than going around moving Ouija boards.”

Seth had a purpose, all right: to deliver the material he’s been giving us twice a week, now, like clockwork for the past five years. But we didn’t know that then. While this was already our fourth session at the board, it was really our first Seth session.

The next two were much the same, except for one bewildering element: I began to anticipate the board’s replies. This bothered me no end, and I grew uneasy. At the next session—our fourth with Seth—I heard the words in my head at a faster and faster rate, and not only sentences but whole paragraphs before they were spelled out.

The next session started like the others. I was working afternoons at an art gallery, and after the dishes were done and Rob was through with painting for the day, we got out the board.

A BOARD IS NEUTRAL. MESSAGES IN THE MIND ARE NOT.

The pointer paused. I felt as if I were standing, shivering, on the top of a high diving board, trying to make myself jump while all kinds of people were waiting impatiently behind me. Actually it was the words that pushed at me—they seemed to rush through my mind. In some crazy fashion I felt as if they’d back up, piles of nouns and verbs in my head until they closed everything else off if I didn’t speak them. And without really knowing how or why, I opened up my mouth and let them out. For the first time I began to speak for Seth, continuing the sentences the board had spelled out only a moment before.

Once more the words just stopped. This time I was determined not to let the same thing happen again until I had time to think it over, and I told Rob. Still we agreed to check with the board. “Was Jane’s answer right, Seth?” Rob asked.

YES, replied the pointer. IT PERKS HER UP NOT TO HAVE TO WAIT AROUND FOR THE BOARD TO SPELL OUT THE ANSWERS.

“I’m glad somebody thinks so,” I said to Rob, but now that things were safely back with the board, my curiosity was at me again. I told Rob to ask if one of us alone could work the pointer, and the pointer suggested that we try. Rob put his hands on the pointer and asked a question, but it barely moved.

On December 8, then, Seth introduced himself. On the 15th I spoke for him for the first time. Soon, freed completely from the board, his personality began to express itself with much greater freedom. The process is fascinating to watch. For this reason I’ll devote some space to the early sessions so that you can become acquainted with the material as Seth gave it, and see him emerge as a personality in his own right.