“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I had just enough time to see the cab driver’s neck from the rear—it was thick and stubby. I didn’t see his face. While this was going on, I lost all contact with my body in the living room. My subjective sensations were those of someone suddenly thrown off-balance by the sickening swerve of the car’s turn. Yet while this was happening, my physical body sat upright in the rocker, speaking without pause as Seth:

The incident had several intriguing implications. I was definitely the one who was “out,” yet Seth described what I saw. His voice and personality were in control of my physical system, while my consciousness was someplace else—and a good many miles away. I didn’t have to tell Seth what happened—he described it immediately.

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.)

The next episode didn’t involve Seth directly, except that I was following his directions in the use of the Inner Senses. I decided to see what impressions of the Gallagher trip I could get on my own. So one morning that same week I lay down, closed my eyes, and gave myself the suggestion that I would find Peg and Bill.

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.

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.

We held seventy-five Instream tests and eighty-three envelope tests between August 1965 and September 1966. Like most people with no background in psychic work, I expected things to be pure and simple. If Seth was what he said he was, then he should be able to look into time and space and closed envelopes as easily as you and I can see the objects in a room. I didn’t realize how much depended on the depth of my trance and on my willingness to give him freedom—I had to learn not to “block” information that came through. I didn’t realize either that little is known about normal perception, much less extrasensory perception, or that no medium is expected to be 100 percent correct. The impressions had to come through me, and as the old saying goes, to err is human.

Talk about a seesaw! When Seth did well on the tests, I felt light as a feather for days. When anything didn’t check out to my satisfaction, I felt as though I weighed 450 pounds and was gaining a pound an hour. I thought that anything less than a perfect performance cast doubts on Seth’s independent nature.

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.