“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

When Peg and Bill returned, we found out that these impressions were quite legitimate. They had paid a three-dollar cab fare to go to the motel from the airport. Peg was quite angry about this, since the same ride two years earlier had cost less than two dollars. Their cab took a very sharp turn to the right. Peg and Bill remembered this vividly, not only because of the sudden turn, but also because this happened right after the driver had run through a traffic light. The turn had been so sharp that it upset them considerably. But the cab driver was not “old, rather than young.” Interestingly enough, Peg said, he did look old from the rear, though, because his neck had a peculiar rough, mottled look. It was also thick and stubby.

The items were enclosed in one sealed envelope between two layers of lightproof bristol cardboard, and then the whole thing was placed in another envelope, which was also sealed. I never knew when we would have such a test, and I never saw the envelope before a session. Rob would hand an envelope to me in the middle of a session. I was always in trance, and usually my eyes were closed. (In any case, the test item was enclosed within the two pieces of cardboard and two envelopes, and was quite opaque.) Sometimes I held the envelope to my forehead while delivering impressions. After the session we checked our results. (Specific examples will appear in the next chapter.)

As Seth varied the trance depths, I became aware of two lines of consciousness, his and my own, and to understand at least to some degree when my own personal associations were an aid and when they were a detriment. In a very deep trance, the inner processes are hidden even from the medium. With most mediums the mechanics are so automatic that little can be learned about the inner psychological actions involved in such work. Seth maintained that our situation would work to our advantage in this respect.

I started the autumn of 1965, then, with high hopes, particularly because of the two out-of-body episodes mentioned earlier in this chapter. I waited to hear what Dr. Instream had to say about them. I was sure he’d have to admit that they were encouraging, even if they didn’t involve his own experiments with us. We’d already begun his series of tests and were sending the results to him each week. So far we’d heard nothing from him about these, and I also looked forward to see how we were doing here. If they turned out even half as good as the out-of-body data, I thought, we’d still be getting off to a great start.