“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

We were in the middle of a Seth session and Seth was giving his impressions of the Gallaghers’ trip. As I sat in my favorite rocker speaking as Seth, suddenly I found myself in the back seat of a cab. The next instant the cab took such a sharp turn to the right that I was shoved over into the corner of the seat. For a minute I was really frightened. I wasn’t used to being comfortably seated in the living room one minute and in the back seat of a swiftly moving cab the next!

“A cab ride. Our cat lover laughs [Seth’s nickname for Peg, who dislikes cats]. A three-dollar fare which seems too much. An old, rather than young, cab driver with a stubby neck. A destination that is mainly to the right after one turn.”

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.)

In the meantime, I’d left my gallery job and was writing full-time. I also began angling with one of the best-paying and most popular magazines in the country. The editor turned down story after story, assuring me each time that I was certain to sell him the next one. I lived by the mail, waiting for an acceptance from this editor, or for a report from Dr. Instream.

Trying to prove the existence of telepathy and clairvoyance to a self-professed “hard-nosed psychologist,” sell fiction to one of the best magazines in the country, and conduct our own tests in the Seth sessions was rather a bit to take on in one year—as I discovered.