“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I was quite nervous before the next session. I’d had a particularly trying day at the gallery, and Rob was tired, too. Yet Rob woke up quickly enough, for I was to speak for Seth for over two hours. This session was quite startling for another reason also—the information itself was quite as surprising as the way I was saying it.

Rob yawned, and the pointer spelled out: I HOPE IT’S NOT THE COMPANY.

Rob laughed, and said, “Seth, are plants and trees fragments?”

Rob said it was as if I were reading from some invisible manuscript. My eyes were wide open. At that point I utterly refused to close them, nor would I sit down. Whatever was happening, I was going to be on my feet so I could have a good running start for the door in case I got worried.

This was a rather hilarious attitude, come to think of it. Actually, as I spoke for Seth I paced the room constantly, yet was hardly aware of doing so. Rob took notes as quickly as he could. He didn’t know shorthand or speedwriting, so he took everything down in longhand and then typed it up the following day. He soon began to develop his own system of symbols and abbreviations, however.

Later Rob told me that he had all kinds of questions, but he didn’t want to interrupt, and his hand was already tired from taking notes. All the while I kept pacing up and down the room, eyes half open, delivering this monologue without a trace of hesitation.

I continued giving this material from 9:00 on, steadily, until Rob had writer’s cramp at 9:50. I’ve only given excerpts. Both of us were amazed that I’d spoken for so long, and delivered such involved sentences without corrections or hesitations of any kind. Then, ten minutes later while we were resting, Rob said that he was going to ask if we’d ever seen such “personality fragment” images. At once, the words started up in my head again, and I began to dictate. While speaking I had no idea of the meaning of the words, so it wasn’t until our next rest period that I knew what Seth had been saying. It was this following passage that both of us, later, found so disquieting.

Rob knew instantly the episode to which Seth was referring. How he managed to sit there calmly taking notes while Seth went on, is more than I know.

In late 1963, some months before our sessions began, we’d taken a vacation in York Beach, Maine, hoping that a change of environment would improve Rob’s health. The doctor didn’t know what was wrong with his back and suggested that he spend some time under traction in the hospital. Instead we decided that his reaction to stress was at least partially responsible, hence the trip.

On the night in question we went to a nightclub in search of a festive atmosphere. Rob was in constant pain, and though he didn’t complain, he couldn’t hide the sudden spasms. Then I noticed an older couple sitting across the room from us. They really frightened me by their uncanny resemblance to Rob and myself. Did we look like that—aloof, bitter—only younger? I couldn’t take my eyes off them, and finally I pointed them out to Rob.

Rob looked over at the couple and groaned with another back spasm. Then something happened that neither of us had been able to explain. To my complete amazement Rob stood up, grabbed my arm, and insisted that we dance. A minute earlier, he’d hardly been able to walk.

I just stared at him. We hadn’t danced together in the eight years of our marriage, and the band was playing a twist, with which we were entirely unfamiliar at the time. Moreover, Rob wouldn’t take no for an answer. I was afraid of making a fool of myself, but Rob dragged me out on the dance floor. We danced for the rest of the evening, and from that point on his physical condition improved remarkably. His whole outlook on life seemed brighter as of that moment.

During a break Rob told me what Seth had said about the images. Neither of us had ever heard about thought-forms then, and the whole thing sounded incredible to me. And yet, I thought, psychologists talk about projection and transference by which we project our fears outward to another person or object and then react to them.

“Who left the room first, Jane and I or the images?” Rob asked.

The evening grew late, but Seth showed no signs of wearing out. Just before midnight, Rob and I took another rest period, and decided to end the session. (It was Seth, incidentally, who suggested we take a five-to-ten-minute break every half hour or so.) Rob and I didn’t know what to make of this session. It was the first time I’d spoken for so long at a time, for one thing. For another, we didn’t know how to evaluate what was said.

Should we continue with the sessions? I was somewhat more reluctant than Rob, being so directly involved, but what an opportunity, I thought! We decided to hold at least a few more sessions to see what might develop. Rob had some questions about fragment personalities he wanted to ask: What did Seth mean when he said we could have turned into those images? Rob wrote the questions down so he wouldn’t forget them, and two nights later we sat down at the board once more. At this point, of course, we had no idea whether or not each session would be our last, regardless of our conscious decisions. For all we knew, Seth might vanish as Frank Withers had. Rob had his list of questions ready so we could get some answers while we still had the opportunity.

But in this next session, I spoke for Seth for a longer time than I had before. Seth gave us a detailed account of two past lives and began a reincarnational history of Rob’s family. The material contained some excellent psychological insights; using them, we found ourselves getting along much better with our relatives. But I didn’t like this insistence upon reincarnation at all. “The psychological insights are great,” I said to Rob at break. “But the reincarnational part is probably fantasy. Delightful, but fantasy.”

“You don’t have to make your mind up one way or the other tonight, do you?” Rob asked. “What’s the rush? See what else he has to say. Besides, I’ve learned as much about my family tonight as I have all my life. That’s worth something.”

Then when the session resumed, Rob asked the question that had been on our minds since Seth first mentioned the York Beach images. “If Jane and I had subconsciously accepted those images, would we have been able to return home, where we’re known? The images were older.”

“Have either of us had other similar experiences?” Rob asked.

“Was the boy real or what?” Rob asked.

Rob grinned, “Would you rather he didn’t?”

“And think of the people we’ve known who suddenly seem entirely different than they used to be, in ways we can’t fathom,” Rob said. “If Seth’s right, they actually became the destructive images they had of themselves.”

“Worried?” Rob asked. He was teasing me.