“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.

“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.

“ ‘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.

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.

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 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.

“Again think in terms of your plane, bounded by its small spindly set of wires, and my plane on the other side. These, as I have said, have boundless solidarity and depth, yet to one side, the other is transparent. You cannot see through, but the two planes move through each other constantly. I hope you see what I have done here. I have initiated the idea of motion, for true transparency is not the ability to see through, but to move through.

“This is what I mean by fifth dimension. Now, remove the structure of the wires and cubes. Things behave as if the wires and cubes existed, but these were only constructions necessary even to those on my plane. … We construct images consistent with the senses we happen to have. We merely construct imaginary lines to walk upon.

“What you call emotion or feeling is the connective between us, and it is the connective that most clearly represents the life force on any plane, under any circumstances. From it is woven all material of your world and mine.”

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?

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.