“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Today Jane and I spent several discouraging hours driving through and around Elmira, inspecting homes that were for sale. Nothing seemed suitable. Then, as we were passing through the outskirts of West Elmira late in the afternoon, I spontaneously turned onto an avenue that we’d first traveled on February 4.

(Jane was momentarily surprised. “Hey — where are we going?”

(“Let’s take another look at that house up here on the hill,” I said and our car began the long steady climb toward a certain dead-end road … So we looked at the hill house again — if from the outside only — but this time we really looked at it. Our inner cogitations about it were beginning to flower. Mine came into consciousness before Jane’s did, but she soon caught up with me. [See the notes prefacing the 736th session.]

(Seth had used more than half of Monday’s session to discuss our house hunting in connection with Sayre and Foster Avenue. Some of his related material there had been fairly personal, but we’d left it in place because of its general application. When Seth added the hill house to his list tonight, however, his connecting information about Jane and me was so intimate that we decided to delete parts of it. But I’ve reassembled the remainder in the proper order, and it’s more than enough to show how closely such “objective” things as houses can be bound up with beliefs and emotions.

(After supper tonight I asked Jane if Seth would comment on the Grunaargh family of consciousness. This is the one Sue Watkins had “picked up on” several years ago; see the notes preceding the last session. I’ve come to think of those data involving Sue and “her” family as cropping up every so often like counterpoint to other themes in this 6th section.)

(10:45. “I feel sad,” Jane said as soon as she was out of a very good trance. “I feel funny — like some part of me wants to burrow into that house on Foster Avenue. Walk around that yard all alone at night….”

(“I know. I said before the session that if we got house material I really wanted good answers, that I’d stay out of it as much as possible. …” Jane went into the kitchen, looking for matches. All in all, I thought she was “recovering” quite easily from Seth’s data, and that she was helped here because we’d revisited the hill house today. Every so often someone wants to know about the extent to which we follow Seth’s advice or information, and I suppose a good answer is that we may decide to go along with it if it suits our conscious purposes to do so. Sometimes we don’t agree with what Seth tells us even when we know it’s good counsel. [However, Jane and I freely admit that on occasion we’ve made the wrong choice in deciding to ignore what Seth had to say; in retrospect we’ve seen that he gave out very valid material.]

(“Oh, hell, I’m getting more,” Jane laughed, coming back into the living room. She sat down. “I’ll have to say that when I ask for straight stuff, I get it.” She still looked a bit teary, but at the same time I was sure now that we’d steered away from any probable reality involving Foster Avenue — and perhaps Sayre too, I thought, considering Seth’s material at 10:15 tonight.³

(11:41. That was that on the families of consciousness for the evening. Jane proceeded to deliver for Seth a few more paragraphs of house material, here deleted, followed by this exchange.)

3. The day after this (738th) session was held I wrote to the real estate agents in Sayre, the Johnsons, informing them that Jane and I were withdrawing any interest we had in the Markle house. We sent the notice not only because of Seth’s material in the session, but because we felt that on our own we’d intuitively resolved a certain probable course of action — just as we’d done concerning the house on Foster Avenue in Elmira. (See Note 8 for Session 737.)

With some surprise, then, considering the 53 years that Mr. Markle’s house has been a portion of my psyche, to whatever degree, I found myself turning away from intensifying that involvement. My realization that Jane wasn’t drawn to the place that much had something to do with my decision, although she was willing to make the purchase — but still, I deliberately passed up the opportunity to spend the later years of my life in the main environment I’d known between the ages of 3 and 12. I felt regret and a strong attraction, but in some way realized that Sayre wasn’t the course to follow. Jane agreed, and we made conscious decisions to go elsewhere.