“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(She sat in her usual place on the couch, and I faced her in her chair across the coffee table. Behind me in the fireplace we heard once again the mysterious scratching or chucking or chirruping sounds we’ve become aware of lately, as though a family of animals or birds has young hatching our or growing in a nest on the other side of the closed damper. I’d heard the same sound a few days ago, but since it had been a windy day I’d thought the noise was caused by branches rubbing against the house or fireplace outside. We don’t know exactly what should be done about the situation, if anything. My present concern is that if there are young birds in the fireplace they may be trapped, not having room enough to learn to fly. But why would birds build a nest in such a place, assuming they could get to it to begin with? It didn’t seem natural for any creature to do that. We’ve also been under the impression since we moved in here that the fireplace had a screen sealing off the chimney from such possibilities.)

(9:01.) When you are dealing with that kind of philosophical investigation, you are more or less forced to look for other definitions. (The noise from the fireplace was now quite loud.) Your very ideas of the nature of reality change. You are still to some extent forced to recognize conventional structures and organizations, including psychological ones. At the same time you search for greater evidence of a vastly different kind of reality. (Long pause.) The larger facts about psychological reality, for example, cannot be fitted to the world’s definitions. You can only get versions and interpretations. Translations and dramatizations that serve to give you glimpses of psychological structures whose very natures do not fit the facts of the world (all intently.

(The animal/bird noises continued in the fireplace chimney behind me. Mitzi had strolled in during the session and had listened briefly and intently to them, but made no startled response. Right now the noises seemed to have receded somewhat.)

(All of a sudden the noises from the fireplace were so loud and intimate that I thought that somehow the raccoons had managed to get past the closed damper and were behind the screen in the fireplace itself, but Jane continued as usual in trance.)

(Frank, incidentally, had brought a ladder so he could get upon the roof to look down our chimney in an effort to see what creatures were causing the rumpus in the fireplace above the damper. [...]

(Once again she sat on the couch, and I sat in her chair facing her across the coffee table—with behind me, the closed-off fireplace. [...]

The comical series of events involving Floyd, one of his sons, and another helper had started this noon: “Hell, Rob, it’s a coon!” a surprised Floyd called down to me from the roof of the house, after the beam from his flashlight had illuminated the black mask across the animal’s face and made its eyes shine as it crouched at the base of the fireplace chimney. [...] Finally Floyd opened the damper a bit and lit a sheet of newspaper in the fireplace: The smoke immediately sent our very upset tenant scrambling up the chimney, across the roof and into the hemlock tree growing at one corner of the front porch. [...]

[...] And we heard no sounds at all from the fireplace in back of me, or from the roof.)

[...] He came to get his rope out of the fireplace chimney—our family of raccoons is still there, evidently immune to the temptations offered by the rope. [...]

[...] As I turned on a couple of additional lights in the living room, to see to write by, our friends in the fireplace began to sound off —adding a new sort of whistling or crying sound—and Jane made what may be a good point: light may leak past the closed damper enough that the raccoons respond to that stimulus. [...]

(And now verbatim:) The fireplace in the hill house is advantageous, as the one in the house on Foster Avenue would have been, simply in that the open hearth represents an inner source of strength and stability. [...]

[...] People sit by a fireplace in wintertime because it is unconsciously recognized that recuperative and therapeutic results occur. [...]

[...] I am not suggesting that you use your fireplace instead of the furnace. [...]

(Our raccoon friends were stirring in the fireplace behind me. [...]

(Long pause at 9:41, eyes closed leaning back on the couch, the ‘coons chattering away in the fireplace.)

[...] It was a stone house with a fireplace in it. [...]

(In the inn there was a huge fireplace. [...]

[...] Not unless my friend builds a fireplace. [...]

We have an excellent stone fireplace in the living room of the hill house, and often during the winter months I used to build a fire in it at suppertime; we ate while sitting on the couch. [...] We had the fireplace cleaned a couple of years ago, however, and with that break in routine I gave up using it: By then my time had become so taken up each day with what seemed like an endless list of things to do—with trying to help Jane, with working, with running the house, with answering the mail and so forth—that I just stopped making fires.

Early this morning we heard strange scratching sounds on the other side of the closed fireplace damper. [...]

[...] Jane leaned back on the couch with her feet up on the coffee table, and I sat facing her with my notebook propped up on one knee; the fireplace was only a couple of feet in back of me. [...]

[...] Behind me in the fireplace our raccoon friends were mildly active. [...]

[...] A note: It appears that the family of raccoons inhabiting our fireplace chimney may have left—or so it seems. [...]

(Our family of raccoons was stirring a bit in the fireplace behind my chair as I sat facing Jane on the couch. [...]

[...] The noises from the fireplace had been quite loud earlier, but now all was quiet. [...]

[...] It was a stone house with a fireplace; September, damp and foggy in the afternoon, about four o’clock. [...]

“In the inn there was a huge fireplace. [...]

It would be nice if you had a fireplace, wouldn’t it?

[...] The family of raccoons in the fireplace behind me had been quite active and sometimes noisy during the session. [...]

The ready-made fireplace is amusing. [...]

[...] It was a ranch-style, cedar-sided dwelling that had just been painted a dark green — a conventional one-story affair with white shutters, a fireplace, a picture window, an attached double garage in back, and many trees and shrubs. [...]

(Then I was watching the fire spread in the stone fireplace. [...]

[...] It should have a fireplace, because of the reminders of the hearth. [...]