“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Then in Sayre, Pennsylvania, this afternoon [Monday the 17th], we found ourselves participating in house-related developments that took us back in time more than nine months.⁹ Jane and I don’t believe in coincidences. We’d considered the Sayre episodes finished last year; yet today the echoes of those earlier events were so prominent that I came to think of them as actual projections from the past into the present, and so into the future, in a most practical manner. Today Jane and I very clearly felt those connections — or probabilities, if one chooses — developing. Seth remarks upon some of them after break, but the best we can offer are a few hints; otherwise all of these house notes would be much longer.

The first (in Sayre), mentioned far earlier in “Unknown” Reality, you thought was definitely sold, and today you discovered that the sale was not that final.¹⁰ As you discussed these issues a rather important main point escaped your minds: The man who owned the first house (Mr. Markle) was a dealer in antiques and precious stones, utterly devoted to his work and engrossed in it, considering it his art. The house has a garden on one side, with high trees, and a yard on the other, and was relatively shielded. The man’s family took second place to some extent. The kitchen and dining areas were small. He had his office downstairs and he often worked at home. His art came first.¹¹

As mentioned much earlier, the real estate couple who showed you the first house, in Sayre (see Note 11), have definite artistic leanings. The woman particularly likes the house, and thought you would. She identified with your ideas of art and work, and saw a probable variation of herself happily ensconced in such surroundings.

The [other] couple also interested in the Foster Avenue house are musicians — attracted to it for the same reasons that you were. You would find their house in Sayre interesting. They are primarily teachers of music, however. Their purposes do not necessarily involve the same kind of privacy that you want, although they think it attractive.¹³

I suggested that you take it (but see my note in the material at next break). It would have been good for you both, but you were afraid of it, and your feelings had much to do with the contract being turned down (by the Veteran’s Administration). That house represented what each of you thought of as unbridled, undisciplined creativity. It was dirty and cluttered. The artist had children who ran about without any control. There was much playfulness there, however, that could have tempered some of your great mutual seriousness at the time. You did not choose to accept such a probability then, any more than you could have accepted my advice all the way. The authorities turned the contract down — but the authorities stood for the inner disciplinarians, and you did not want to share your road with the world; nor did you want, later, to share your driveway (for the Sayre house) with your neighbor.

(Considering parallels, here’s another of the many “connections” that Jane and I have become aware of since we began our housing odyssey last year [already we’ve compiled a list of 30 similar relationships]: Three out of the four dwellings that in one way or another we’ve been seriously involved with possess driveways shared by next-door neighbors — Mr. Markle’s in Sayre; the apartment house we live in now; and the house in Elmira that we considered buying in 1964. Only the Foster Avenue place is exempt here. I see such connections as symbols running through our personal experiences.

Now: You chose your present neighborhood particularly because when you moved here (from Sayre in 1960) it was highly professional. Work and home were united. The dentist next door lives and works in the same house. So did the other dentist around the corner, and the chiropractor beside him. There was a uniting factor that you recognized, where of office and home were in the same location.

The suburbs obviously will not suit you unless you find a house apart from others while in the same general area. You like both the [Sayre and Foster Avenue] houses thus far because their grounds set them apart from the neighbors and give clearly defined boundaries — very important to both of you.

7. Added later: See the notes on the hill house at the beginning of the 736th session. In them I wrote about the delay involved before Jane’s and my perceptions of that particular dwelling blossomed within our conscious minds in any meaningful way; the results of that joint metamorphosis are described in sessions 738–39. In the meantime, then, Seth’s material in this (737th) session deals only with the house on Foster Avenue, in Elmira, and — as discussed shortly — with Mr. Markle’s house in Sayre, Pennsylvania, since those two places were the ones we were consciously interested in at the moment. Seth made no predictions, about the hill house or any other, nor did we ask him to.

10. This afternoon Jane and I had spontaneously decided to lay our work aside and go for a drive. We needed the brief change. Neither of us had any conscious intentions of making the trip to Sayre, which lies just across the New York State border in Pennsylvania, some 18 miles east and south of Elmira. We found ourselves doing so, however; we also found ourselves driving past the house we’d considered buying there last year. I received a distinct shock of surprise when I saw the familiar “For Sale” sign still tacked to the front of the house. So did Jane — although she’s never been drawn to it in the way that I am. We’d been informed months ago that the place had been sold. This new joint perception of ours set a whole group of events into motion — all of which were connected to those described in sessions 693–94 (see Note 9).

13. Here Seth touches upon several ramifications involving our house affairs that I’ve been saving to present all at once, if briefly. This note, then, will enlarge upon the fertile field of connections, or probabilities, that is enveloping Jane and me, the houses in Sayre and Elmira, the real estate agents we’ve been dealing with (the Johnsons and Debbie — who are not acquainted), and some other people.

When Debbie took Jane and me through the Foster Avenue house on February 5, she told us that another couple — who live in Sayre, and whom I’ll call the Steins — had also inspected the property and planned to make an offer for it, while trying at the same time to sell their present home. Without thinking too much about it, we mentally filed this bit of news along with the connections that had developed out of our house-hunting episodes last year; even now, we still didn’t realize just how the complicated relationships between those events of April 1974, and now, were to continue growing. For instance: When Jane and I “rediscovered” Mr. Markle’s house in Sayre today (February 17), and saw to our considerable surprise that it might still be for sale, we at once visited the Johnsons, who had shown us through it last year. We were then in for another surprise — for the Johnsons are the agents in charge of selling the Steins’ residence in Sayre.

I want to emphasize here that the Steins, who are teachers of music, have been attracted to a home in Elmira that was owned for many years by a man who, as a merchant, had strong connections with music in general and pianos in particular. Mr. Stein, incidentally, teaches in Elmira — hence the decision by him and his wife to move here and so eliminate his workday traveling between Sayre and Elmira.

Seth commented that Jane and I would be interested in the Steins’ home in Sayre. Not so. We looked at it today in passing after the Johnsons told us it was for sale; the truth is, we saw nothing about it that turned us on.