“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“I asked Jane to lay her wedding ring on the table. The three of us joined hands around it. Sitting quietly in the dim light, staring at the ring, I realized that the unwary observer might not have too much trouble seeing whatever he wanted to see.

“Then suddenly Jane announced in a firm clear voice, ‘Watch the hand.’ It was a command, and I knew that Seth was with us. Jane felt her hand grow cold. With considerable relish Seth, through Jane’s voice, described in detail each effect that followed—so that, he said, there would be no doubt as to what happened.

“He began by telling us to watch Jane’s thumb. The tip of it began to glow. It seemed to be an internal suffusing of the flesh with a cold white light. There was no radiant effect, merely the changing color of the flesh itself. Since the hand was in shadow, there was no mistaking the change.

“Jane’s wrist did thicken. She sat with the wrist of her left hand pressed to the tabletop. She wore a black sweater with the sleeves half pushed up and the cold white light spread up over the thickening wrist, up her forearm, to the sweater.

“Then the hand began to change its general proportions and resembled a pawlike shape. I had the eerie feeling of an animal’s forepaw. Jane’s fingers, normally long and graceful, had shrunken to stubby appendages, or so it appeared. The glow suffused the palm, eliminating the shadows normally to be seen there, so that it did not seem that the fingers were merely folded over.

“Slowly the hand regained normal shape. Jane still sat with her palm up. Now Seth really extended himself. The fingers began to elongate noticeably and to whiten. Then a second set of fingers began to rise up over Jane’s own fingers. Now it could have been easy enough for Jane to bend her own fingers into this position, but here the three of us now saw the second set rising up long and white. Moreover, this second set had the fingernails on top. Had they been Jane’s own fingers, the nails would have been on the undersides and invisible.

“ ‘For a first attempt, I’m doing beautifully,’ Seth said. ‘What do you think of that? Take a good look.’ For some minutes we studied the effect before us. To me the extra fingers bent so grotesquely looked waxen, almost wet, as though freshly molded. Jane did not appear to be frightened. Then, gradually, the extra set of fingers disappeared.

“The hand did become stubby and fat for a moment. Then it resumed the pawlike shape. ‘Now,’ Seth said to me, ‘very carefully reach out and touch the hand. I want you to touch it, so that you can feel what it is like.’ Gingerly, I touched my fingertips to Jane’s palm. The pawlike hand felt very cold, wet and clammy, and the skin had a bumpy feeling that I wasn’t used to in Jane’s hand.

“Seth now had this cold inner light suffuse Jane’s wrist and palm to an even more remarkable degree. At the joining of hand and wrist, the flesh rose up in an egglike lump. The white crept up Jane’s arm to the sweater, and bled down her fingers, until all semblance of shadow was gone from the arm and palm. Then to end this part of the demonstration, Seth had Jane place her hands side by side on the table, so that we could plainly see the difference between the two. Gradually the hand returned to normal, and Seth instructed us to take a rest period.

“After the break, Seth told us to shut the door leading to the bath. The living room side of the door holds a full-length mirror, and Seth told us to look into it. Since the mirror is tall and narrow, we had to crowd in close on three sides of the little table, in order to see our reflections. Jane sat in the middle. Her lips were very close to my ear as she talked. I could hear and feel each breath, each swallow she took. Her voice dropped considerably in volume and I really had the sensation that she was indeed speaking for someone else (rather than for a subconscious personality, for example, who just called itself Seth).

“ ‘Now the three of you see your reflections clearly in the mirror, just as you should. Watch, for I’ll change Jane’s image and replace it with another,’ Seth said. And Jane’s image did begin to change. Her head dropped lower. At the same time, the shape of the skull changed, the hair grew shorter and fit about it much more closely. The shoulders of the mirror image hunched over, and grew more narrow. And then the head in the mirror tilted, and looked down, while Jane herself sat with her head erect, staring straight ahead into the mirror.

“Jane said later that this shocked her more than anything else. I looked at her first beside me, then in the mirror. There was no doubt as to the difference between the two. I also saw a shadow suffuse the mirror image. At the same time I had the feeling that the face hung forward from the body. The mirror head seemed to grow smaller. I detected a faint glow about it as it hung in space, seemingly between the mirror reflection and the three of us.

“It was also obvious that the mirror image sat several inches lower down than Jane herself sat. And now and then the mysterious head would dip down and then hang forward from the body.” End of Rob’s notes.

When the material given above was finished, Seth stayed around, as if to emphasize an informal social period. He invited questions, gestured frequently, paused in front of Rob, looking right at him through my open (but un-Jane-like) eyes.