“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.

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.

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.

“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.”

“There was an afternoon in a small park when you were a child about eleven. You thought you were alone. It was close to five, September 17, on a day when there was no school. Another boy appeared. You had not seen him approach and took it for granted that he came by way of a walk that wound around a bandstand. He had jacks in his hand. You looked at each other and were about to speak, when a squirrel ran up a nearby tree.

“Occasionally a personality will astound itself by such an image production. Usually this type vanishes by the time the personality reaches adulthood. In childhood, however, such instances are frequent. Often when a child cries about a bogeyman, what he has seen is such an image production or fibrous projection, formed by vivid desire on the part of the subconscious.”

“I love the way he ties all this in with subconscious motivation,” I said later.

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

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

Then, however, all of this was new to us. For all I knew, Seth was a secondary personality himself, and at this point we could have dropped the sessions. Though we found them intriguing, we certainly weren’t convinced that Seth was someone who had survived death. Most likely, we thought, he was a very lively portion of my own subconscious. By now we’d done enough reading to worry about the secondary personality angle. There was no evidence of excessive emotionalism in the material, though: no repressed hates, prejudices, or desires. Seth made no demands of any kind upon either of us.