“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane’s account of “a year of testing” Seth’s [and her own] psychic abilities is given in chapters 6 through 8 of The Seth Material. The tests began with the 179th session for August 18, 1965] and finally ended with the 310th session for January 9, 1967, although actually most of them were held during the year following their inception. All that work can’t be described here, but we accomplished our main goal: exploring from new angles the relationships involving Jane, Seth, and our physical [camouflage] reality.

(The tests concerned two main approaches. The first, for our own study, was for Seth to describe objects thoroughly sealed in double envelopes; the envelopes were prepared [unknown to Jane, of course] by myself and by others. The second was for Seth to give long-distance impressions on a regular basis about the reality of an eminent, elderly psychologist at an Eastern university. We met “Dr. Instream,” as Jane called him in The Seth Material, but once, a few weeks after I’d written him in the spring of 1965 about Jane’s growing psychic abilities. Seth conducted 83 envelope tests for Jane and me, and within a concentrated period of nine months during that “year of testing,” gave impressions for Dr. Instream on 75 occasions; those I mailed to the doctor as they came through.¹⁸ Often both tests were held during each of our twice-weekly sessions.

(Here’s what Seth said after that first, only moderately successful, envelope test had taken place in the 179th session:)

We are dealing here with something rather unusual (the tests), in that we are attempting to permit two personalities to exist side by side, so to speak. Ruburt is not in a deep trance state. I do not supersede his own personality. He allows me, in our sessions, to coexist with himself.

A deeper trance state would allow us to get less distorted information on such a test as this, initially, but our results will improve, and such experiments will be helpful in that the various layers of the two personalities, Ruburt’s and my own, will be seen in their operating procedures.

(From the 180th session for August 23, 1965:) Tonight’s (second envelope) test dealt with clairvoyance — I happened to pick up my information that way, although it could just as easily have been obtained through telepathic communication.¹⁹ In the future, tests will be worked out in whatever manner is needed.

I speak as my whole self to you … since my personality structure is more advanced than is usual for communications from other systems. Therefore, I do not need to adopt a past ego [of my own]. Perhaps because this is not necessary, the psychological bridge is required to make my messages comprehensible to Ruburt. This connecting framework does some of the translating for me that a reassembled ego would do. It delivers information to Ruburt in a way that he can understand. Occasionally [in your tests] I do impress him directly, telepathically (see Note 19), with a concept. When he receives data in the form of images the framework is operating. With my direction, this framework uses Ruburt’s personal associations to direct his impressions toward the correct point. Then when we are successful I insert the right information.²³

18. As Jane wrote in Chapter 8 of The Seth Material, the Instream tests were very unsatisfactory for us. Since we were never informed as to their results, we were left with no way to judge what proportions of Seth’s impressions could be considered hits, near-misses, or failures. Our nine-month involvement under those conditions revealed both our naïveté at the time and our stubbornness in trying to learn. But learn we did, if not always as we’d expected to; for besides gaining valuable insights into Seth-Jane’s abilities through our own envelope tests, we discovered much through our dealings with at least some kinds of “authority.” Overall, the affair of the tests was most instructive.

19. Seth commented upon some of his own “psychic” abilities when I asked him if he’d telepathically acquired any information about the test object from me, since I was the one who had chosen it, rather than from the object itself. The results of the second envelope test were obviously more precise than for the first one. At break I told Jane that she’d done well. We were very encouraged.

23. The 241st session, mentioned in Note 22, is one of those we hope to publish in full, for in it Seth discussed how the psychological bridge helps Jane “translate” his telepathic material. The information came through in connection with our envelope tests and those for Dr. Instream, both sets of which were in mid-course then, in March 1966. (See the account of Jane’s “year of testing” and the excerpts from sessions 179–80.)