“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

We started the Instream tests and our own envelope tests in August of 1965. In October my first book was coming out, and Peg Gallagher, a reporter for the Elmira Star Gazette, interviewed me. I’d known her slightly in the past, but now she and her husband and Rob and I became good friends. Bill is assistant advertising director of the Star Gazette, and he and Peg were soon leaving for a vacation in Puerto Rico. We decided to set up an experiment.

We wouldn’t communicate at all through usual means. Instead, we would ask Seth if he could “tune in” on the Gallaghers during their vacation. During their trip we would substitute this experiment for our envelope tests. We knew that Peg and Bill were going to San Juan, but that was all we knew. Besides, neither Rob nor I have ever been to Puerto Rico.

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.

He didn’t mention my sensations when I was thrown into the corner of the cab, though. Was this because he didn’t feel them? Or because I was certain to remember these myself? And consider this puzzler: Granted my consciousness traveled from Elmira to San Juan in space, what about time? The session was held on Monday, October 25, 1965, but the incident happened to the Gallaghers one week earlier, on Monday, October 17. Yet I lived that experience just as vividly as though it transpired at that moment in Puerto Rico. (Seth also gave other correct impressions of that same trip.)

Suddenly, without transition, I found myself descending through the air to land on a long narrow porch that was surrounded by a low railing. I knew that my body was in bed, but lost all contact with it. Regardless of where it was, I was someplace else entirely. Looking around I saw that I stood on the veranda of an oddly constructed double-story motel.

I didn’t know if it would work or not, but I reset the alarm for thirty minutes later, then I lay back down and told myself I would return to the same place. Brief but definite traveling sensations followed. Mountains and skies swept by. Then I found myself hovering in the air above the same motel.

I was too high to make out details, so I willed myself to move down closer. Without any difficulty I changed position and came down, though still not to the ground. A man was directly beneath me, and slightly ahead of me. He wore a business suit and hat, and carried a briefcase. As I watched, he crossed a blacktop expanse to a sidewalk, and entered a large building on the other side of the motel. I remember thinking it odd that he wore business clothes in what I took to be a resort area. It seemed that only moments had passed, but the alarm rang once again. I snapped back to my body.

Not only that, but the man I saw was one Bill noticed on both mornings, specifically because he wore business clothes. The man was a native—another reason Bill noticed him. I didn’t know this, having seen him from the rear. The building he’d entered had been the post office.

How much more fun this sort of thing was than the Instream tests, which we were also conducting! Even our own envelope series was dry in comparison. We mailed copies of the Gallagher material to Dr. Instream. I was really excited about the whole thing and waited eagerly for his comments. I took it for granted that he wouldn’t consider that we had any scientific evidence, but we did have the nearly identical sketches, and the impressions were correct. “He may not consider this scientific enough,” I said to Rob, “but he has to admit, at the very least, that clairvoyance occurred.”

Yet Seth managed to use the tests to demonstrate his own clairvoyant ability, further my education, and instruct us on the processes involved. He varied the depth of my trances during tests so I could get the feel of various stages of consciousness, and also showed me how to let him use my own personal associations in order to get certain data. He used the tests to demonstrate ESP; but more, he gave me constant practice in changing my subjective focus, explaining the whole thing as he went along.

Usually no one was present at these sessions but Rob and I—hardly a scientific state of affairs. But with the envelope tests we weren’t trying to convince scientists or psychologists of anything. We were trying to see what we could and could not expect of the sessions. We wanted something we could check out for ourselves right away. I wanted to know how we were doing!

All in all our own tests proved invaluable, not only as a part of my training and as a means of increasing my self-confidence, but also in preparing me for some other out-of-body-experiences that would take place during later Seth sessions. The tests, and Seth’s comments, also gave us insights into the nature of inner perception that literally could not have been achieved in any other way.

In the data he would often differentiate between his impressions and any of mine that had slipped in, connect mine to their source in personal associations, and tell us whether or not they were legitimate. I am seldom so “blacked out” as to feel as if I were sleeping. Usually I know what is going on, although I may almost instantly forget what has happened. On occasion Seth and I can take turns talking so that I can go in and out of trance in seconds. Sometimes it seems I merge with Seth, feeling his emotions and reactions completely, rather than my own. In this case the Jane-self is far in the background, dozing but dimly conscious. Other times, though less seldom, I am in the foreground and Seth advises me as to what to say.