“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

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.

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.

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.”

Instantly the words tumbled through my head and out my mouth. I was out and Seth was on. “The images represented a culmination of many years’ experience of a negative trend. If you had accepted them, you would have ended up as replicas as you transferred into the images. Yet, what creativity and constructiveness you possessed would have softened the faces. You would be recognizable to friends but changes would be noted. The remark would be made that perhaps you didn’t seem the same, and with good reason.”

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

In the meantime, the Christmas holidays came along. We had no sessions for two weeks. Both of us wondered what would happen when—and if—we tried again. But the next episode so upset our ideas of what was possible, so outraged our conventional theories, that we very nearly quit the whole thing. Obviously we didn’t—yet our reactions were to color our activities for the next several years, and greatly influence the direction in which I would allow my own psychic abilities to operate.