“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

As far as I was concerned, I had enough evidence to convince me that both episodes were legitimate. They started me on my own work in out-of-body experiments, in which I’m still trying to find answers to the many questions posed by such phenomena. Later, Seth was to give us instructions. As a matter of fact, as I write this book, Rob and I are just starting a joint series of projection experiments that Seth initiated. These first instances greatly increased my confidence in Seth’s abilities and my own.

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.

As Seth varied the trance depths, I became aware of two lines of consciousness, his and my own, and to understand at least to some degree when my own personal associations were an aid and when they were a detriment. In a very deep trance, the inner processes are hidden even from the medium. With most mediums the mechanics are so automatic that little can be learned about the inner psychological actions involved in such work. Seth maintained that our situation would work to our advantage in this respect.