“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

An experimental séance was the next on the list of experiments for my book. We had only the foggiest idea of what a séance was, never having attended one. We did think that more than two people should be involved, though, so we decided to ask Bill Macdonell to join us, since he was the only one who knew of our experiments. Bill dropped by on the evening of January 2, 1964, and on the spur of the moment I suggested that the three of us give it a try.

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.

“A tiny point of light grew on the edge of the ring, but by moving my arm, I discovered I could make the light wink off and on. It was simply the red reflection from the candle, so I placed the candle behind the curtains where the light was diffused. Nothing happened as we stared at the ring again. I began to ask questions out loud, at random, but I did not address them to Seth.

“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.

“ ‘Now the hand changes again,’ Seth said. ‘It becomes a stubby fat one. Frank Withers had a hand like that, just like that. Frank Withers was a fathead,’ he said, with great satisfaction, even though Frank was, according to Seth, a personality fragment of his own entity.

“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).

“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.

During the séance I hadn’t been a bit nervous or frightened. Toward the end, though, I was shocked to see such a difference between my mirror image and myself. I think that I was momentarily afraid that I really looked like that. After all, that’s a normal enough reaction—usually when you look into a mirror, it gives a faithful reproduction, and no woman is going to be pleased to see a weird-looking apparition staring back.

But as soon as the séance was over, I was appalled. Instead of being encouraged by Seth’s part in the events, we were upset. We all knew what we had seen. Rob had even touched the hand at one time, and Seth had given us many occasions to check effects as they occurred. We couldn’t accept the evidence of our senses, nor could we really deny such obvious evidence. Though we were trying the experiment for the book, we thought that seances were kooky, somehow unrespectable. We didn’t want Seth involved, and specifically had made a point of not asking for him.

My intellectual skepticism was aroused simply because the affair had been so successful. We argued back and forth as to whether or not suggestion could have been responsible, but we knew that this could not explain half of what happened. It could hardly explain the bumpy quality Rob had felt in my hand, or the second set of fingers, though we decided that it could perhaps have accounted for the odd mirror image.

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.

For the first time Seth really “came through” as a definite other personality, laughing and joking. Rob just couldn’t believe that he was speaking to me, in any ordinary terms. But more than this, Seth’s long monologue on the nature of reality captivated and intrigued us. We had no idea that it was actually a highly simplified explanation, cleverly geared to our own level of understanding at the time. It made a tremendous impression on us nonetheless.

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.

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.

Rob laughed at this, and so did I when he read me the notes. We were fascinated by the monologue on the fifth dimension—which ran much longer, incidentally, than the excerpts given here. Seth’s personality impressed Rob to such an extent that he, at least, was convinced that Seth was a completely independent personality. He knows me so well, of course, in almost every mood, that he’s in an excellent position to judge the differences and similarities between my personality and Seth’s.

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?

Far from looking for Seth in every corner, I guarded my mental integrity with all the determination of my nature. Then I felt silly, because Seth made absolutely no attempt to “invade” my normal working day. Worse, I felt that he was amused but understanding, and felt that my efforts, if basically unnecessary, were still important for my peace of mind.

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.