“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The third time we tried it, the little pointer finally began to move beneath our fingertips. It spelled out messages supposedly coming from a Frank Withers (not the real name) who had lived in Elmira and died during the 1940’s.

Here are a few examples. Rob asked the questions. The pointer spelled out the answers.

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.

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.

Rob asked the questions, then we paused while he wrote out the answers the pointer spelled. Frank Withers had given simple one- or two-word responses in previous sessions. Now the answers became longer, and their character seemed to change. The atmosphere of the room was somehow different.

CONSCIOUSNESS IS LIKE A FLOWER WITH MANY PETALS, replied the pointer.

This was the first time the pointer spelled complete sentences. I laughed.

Rob and I shrugged at each other: this was really wild, and the pointer was speeding faster and faster. Rob waited a moment, then asked, “What would you prefer to be called?”

TO GOD, ALL NAMES ARE HIS NAME, the pointer spelled.

All this was spelled out so quickly that we could hardly keep our hands on the pointer. Despite myself, I leaned closer. The back of my neck prickled. What was going on?

WHAT’S TO CLEAR? replied the pointer.

The pointer began to spell out the answer to Rob’s question.

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.

I nodded, bewildered. “Dimly, as if a radio program was going on in my head from some other station.” I paused and put my hands back on the pointer, thinking that I’d had enough of this speaking—or whatever it was—for one night.

I relaxed a little; the pointer was taking over the messages again. But Rob asked another question.

The pointer began the answer.

Again the words were speeding through my head while the little pointer spelled them out slowly and methodically. I remember a terrific impatience, and then I was finishing the message aloud: “They have to be translated into physical reality. Fragments of another sort, called personality fragments, operate independently, though under the auspices of the entity.”

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.