“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.

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.)

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.”

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.

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.

Sometimes Rob prepared the envelopes just before a session, and sometimes way ahead of time. He used all kinds of things for test items, some that I had seen, recently or in the past, and some that I had never seen. He might use a letter, for example, that had come the day before, and which I had read, or a bill from several years back, or an item he picked up that I had never seen, or an envelope prepared by a friend—in which case the contents were unknown even to Rob. Pieces of paper Rob picked up in the streets, leaves, beer coasters, chunks of hair, photographs, sketches, bills—all were used at one time or another. Sometimes Rob chose items specifically because they had strong emotional charges connected with them. Other times he purposely used neutral objects. We wanted to see if Seth did better with certain kinds of targets than others.

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.

Our own tests gave me a standard against which to measure my performance and Seth’s, providing an immediate check of accuracy and teaching me to sharpen my subjective focus to go from the general to the specific. All of this training was important as far as my reception of the Seth Material itself was concerned. Seth has often spoken about the necessary distortions that must occur in any such communications, and he is most concerned that the material be as little contaminated by distortions as possible. He discusses this thoroughly in later sessions.

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.