“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Actually, for the first time in our lives we found ourselves experiencing events that we couldn’t explain, and doubting the obvious evidence of our senses—an uncomfortable spot for anyone. The affair had such an effect upon us that I wouldn’t try that kind of a séance again for three years. (As you will see, however, Seth appeared in apparition form in session #68.) From then on, we always kept lights on for easier checking of any effects that might appear.

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.

The next night we held what we thought might be our last session. After it, we knew that we were committed, and to us the session really marks the beginning of the Seth Material, the end of the preliminary data.

For nearly three hours I spoke for Seth, striding up and down the room, joking, pausing now and then for Rob to catch up with his notes, and delivering this monologue, using gestures and facial expressions, verbal expressions and inflections, entirely different from my own. I spoke steadily, without hesitation, breaking up serious philosophical material with jovial comments, much like a professor at a small seminar. The session so aroused our intellectual and intuitional curiosity that all thoughts of discontinuing went out the window.

It was in this session that Seth suggested we hold sessions twice a week, saying that a schedule was far better than spasmodic activity. He went on: “At one time or another, all of us on my plane give such lessons, but psychic bonds between teacher and pupils are necessary, which means that we must wait until personalities on your plane have progressed sufficiently for lessons to begin. Lessons then are conducted with those psychically bound to us.

Then, with strong humorous accents he spoke about the Ouija board which we still used to open and close sessions. “It is a matter of formality in that it renews contact in a familiar manner, and also, I have always been partial to formality to some extent. The board gives us a breathing spell and is a method of saying good day or good evening, or tipping one’s hat. I’m also of the opinion that small ritual tends to emphasize data in the mind, and set it off to advantage, in the same way that good cuisine is set off by fine dishes. … At the end of a session it would be most cordial to touch your hands briefly to the board. You’re lucky that I don’t request you to wear full-dress clothing.”

After having Rob describe the session, and after reading the notes, my attitude was one of simple astonishment. Rob and I are very informal; our friends are informal. The men don’t wear hats and suits, for example, but jeans and shirts or sweaters. I found Seth delightful, whoever or whatever he was. Who else did we know, so “old school” who’d even speak of tipping one’s hat, or refer to food as “good cuisine?” Anyway he certainly didn’t sound frightening, and the fifth-dimensional monologue was really provocative.

I was already beginning to study my own psychological behavior, though, and the question of Seth’s independent reality came more and more into my mind. Since I “become” Seth in some fashion, I’m never able to see myself as Seth in the way that Rob can, or that my students can in a class session, but I do know that he makes a definite impression on others. Who or what was he? I questioned Rob constantly. How did I look? How did he know someone else was speaking? What was there about Seth that so convinced him that Seth was more than a dissociated part of my own subconscious?

Still, I was never aware of new developments until they actually occurred spontaneously, and to my own surprise. If we thought that Seth “came through” as himself in the last sessions, we had a lot to learn in the next one, when Seth’s own, more powerful voice suddenly emerged.

The first session with Frank Withers had been held on December 2, 1963. In the fourteenth session, January 8, I was ready to speak for Seth, deep masculinelike tones and all. We had traveled some way in little over a month. Beyond doubt those thirty-odd days were filled with the most intense psychological activity, excitement, and speculation that we had ever encountered. It would be at least three years and after my book appeared before we even began to understand what had happened.