“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I was really delighted when the whole thing checked out. I saw just what I could have been expected to see had I been in the cab physically. Peg and Bill were never aware of my presence.

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.

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!