“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The results were so surprising that rather than paraphrase Rob’s notes, I’m going to include them exactly as he wrote them. For one thing, he was a more objective observer than I was. The very way his notes are written also shows his state of mind, his careful attitude and critical manner. Bill Macdonell read the notes and agrees with them.

Later work has convinced me that psychic phenomena do not simply appear because we want them to, or as the result of suggestion alone. Other, later effects happened in full light, in a few of my ESP classes, for example. The Seth apparition also appeared in full light. I’ve also known incidents since, when groups of highly suggestible people with little critical sense have gathered in dark rooms expecting all kinds of apparitions—and nothing happened at all.

I think Rob and I were angry at being brought up short, forced to face issues we weren’t ready to face. Everything was happening so fast. It hadn’t been a month yet since we began with the Ouija board. Our ideas of what was possible were being turned topsy-turvy. We decided to hold one other session to see what Seth had to say about the affair, and again we considered dropping the experiments, book or no book. Yet we could hardly blame Seth, since the séance was our idea to begin with. I had to write up the séance results for one of my early chapters, and I hardly knew how to go about it.