“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Carl had a brainstorm; we placed our bathroom scale on the tabletop finally when the pressure was “going good,” and requested A A to continue building up the pressure so that Carl, who was on the side of the table manifesting the pressure at that time, could measure the force he used to get the table back on the floor solidly. A A obligingly built up the pressure again; pressing down, Carl saw that he used a hand pressure of 70 pounds, as measured by the scale, to get all three legs of the table back on the floor, whereas usually gravity would effortlessly draw the legs back to the floor when our fingertips were removed.

(Needless to say, when Carl or whoever was measuring pressure on the scale, the other three took pains to see that they were not subconsciously exerting a heavy pressure on the other side of the table,thus forcing a stronger response across the tabletop to get the legs back on the floor. Such checking was easy to do; nevertheless conscious deliberate checks were constantly being made to make certain opposing pressures were not unwittingly being exerted. Most of the time our hands touched the table so lightly that it could move quite freely beneath them, seemingly of its own volition. This steady checking has the added advantage that it serves as a protection against any possible hallucination [although this would have to be a mass effect, and highly unlikely]; the checking in a deliberate manner was a good method to keep one’s feet on the floor, so to speak, even if the table was acting contrary to gravity.

(It is of course possible to balance any object, large or small, and this has led Jane and me to experiment a bit with the table in question. It was soon discovered that by balancing it at a certain angle with the fingertips, then exerting a downward pressure, one can have an illusion of a force from beneath holding the table up with one leg off the floor. However, as far as we can tell this is not the force we have experienced when a leg will refuse to return to the floor.

(The two obvious points are that the table broke, and that a great force was needed to do this. I personally witnessed Bill Gallagher pushing heavily down upon the resisting table a few seconds before it broke. My estimate is that the third, resisting leg, was perhaps an inch or two off the floor. I recall at the time being especially intrigued that such a small space between table leg and floor was leading, for whatever reason, to so much human effort being expended.

[...] Bill Macdonnel asked Jane and me to attend a seance on the deserted third floor of the building in downtown Elmira, where Bill has his studio. Working on the second floor, Bill had several times heard footsteps on the floor above; but checking the deserted floor, unused for many years, had found nothing except doors mysteriously unlocked.

(Jane and I and some people we had not met before, with Bill, tried to table tip in the darkness on the third floor. [...] A foot doctor had committed suicide on the third floor several years ago, and October was the month of the deed. [...]

[...] Right in front of us was the sky, which somehow came right down to the floor; the view was spectacular and the sky was doing something very strange; it was all made up of large sky-folds which blew and changed, huge folds coming down from inexpressible heights, past us, I think. [...]

[...] I’m dancing at a swank dance floor with a younger man with dark darting eyes that now remind me of Frank Longwell, Jr. I know I’ve seen him once before and that he’s a thief. [...]

Then suddenly—I felt myself on bedroom floor, again not normally stretched but higher than in previous 2 episodes, trying to talk; felt support on floor. [...]

(Later talking to Bill Gallagher: He and Pat Norelli stood at one side of the table, exerting strong pressure to force third leg to floor. Never did get it down. Before they did, one of the 2 legs already on the floor, opposite them, gave way. Tabletop didn’t break beneath Bill’s hands, he said, but, he believes, when table fell over to floor & struck edge of table top against floor, away from Bill and Pat.

[...] [Jane gestures.] It will be remembered that when Seth gave this data the first time, Jane held the envelope to her forehead with its long dimensions horizontal to the floor. As explained, this meant the spines of the two leaves were also roughly horizontal to the floor and her insight. Seth elaborates a bit here now, although Jane now sat holding the envelope in her lap, and with its short dimensions parallel to the floor.

[...] (Jane gestured with the envelope which she now held so that the short dimensions were horizontal to the floor. [...]

[...] She held it in the same position as noted before, the small dimensions parallel to the floor. [...]

[...] This gave me enough time to once again see that she held the envelope in the same position relative to the floor. [...]

[...] This York Beach dancing establishment was actually a ground floor room in one of the older beach hotels there. [...] It was not a large room, and the dance floor was quite small; fifteen couples would be forced to stand elbow to elbow. The bandstand was at the end of the dance floor, and when the trumpet blared the noise was deafening. [...]

The man and the woman in the York Beach dancing establishment, sitting across the floor alone at a table. [...]

[...] They stood up, walked across the floor and disappeared in the crowd in the anteroom by the door. [...]

[...] We found ourselves on the other side of the floor, shoved next to the couple’s table, dancing very close. [...]

[...] If the beginning of movement in a piece of furniture is weird to start with, a refusal by the table to sit on the floor as one expects is much more so. This period lasted for perhaps ten minutes or more, while the three of us took turns shifting position so we could all test the pressure required to push the table down to the floor. [...]

[...] Each time it reached the edge of the rug we pulled it back to keep it off the bare floor, where it would have been very noisy.

[...] To our surprise we discovered that it required an active pressure from us to force the table back down to the floor so that all three legs made contact. [...]

With a floor not of wood, perhaps of cement, but of a stone, definitely a stone or sand colored stone floor.

(“Concrete [cement] floor.”)

For example, I’ll see, say, Rob’s head with our floor stand growing out of it into a new kind of object.... [...]

[...] There were other people in a blue mood on his floor, also. [...]

[...] She kept everybody on the floor awake last night. [...]

(I told Jane that it was most interesting, the way Seth had said she drew upon the feelings of others upon her floor last night. [...]

[...] When she rocked back and forth as Seth, Carl said, the floor beneath the rocker creaked. But the floor did not creak when Jane rocked as herself after 10:45 PM. [...] He sat in the chair now, without shifting its position; when he rocked back and forth the floor creaked.

(I had heard the creaking of the floor while writing, but hadn’t noticed when it took place and when it did not.

[...] The nurses and aides on the floor are full of hell today, telling explicit sexual jokes and playing tricks on one another.

(Jane described a very vivid and even exhilarating dream she’d had last night, in which she’d been playing with her own collection of trinkets, sitting on the floor, and so forth. [...]

[...] You have not gone to establishments where dancing is the usual thing, where a dance floor is available. [...]

[...] The physical conditions, the floor, the act of dancing when others are not, these circumstances are not to your liking. [...]

[...] Leave the floor there uncluttered. There seems to be a possibility that I do not understand, where for one reason or another newspapers might be laid upon the floor, in that room. [...]

[...] (Pause.) Now as to your picture of your sister, a period approximately six months distant and the probability of a bathroom tumble, that can be averted if no small rugs are used on the floor. [...]

[...] A more playful attitude should be adopted when he gets up and down from the floor, and in the running. Have him see himself on the floor, for example, and get there without too much concentration upon the method or the muscles used, as this will take care of itself.

[...] When this is done, as it was this evening, easily, getting up and down from the floor does the same thing physically, reminding the body and the mind of successful performances in the past. [...]

[...] Around house once good—did john, kitchen & bedroom floors for 2nd time (still one short). [...]

Now the same applies to getting down on the floor, and up from it. [...] At the same time—I do not mean simultaneously—in spare moments, playfully and not seriously, he should see himself performing any number of activities on the floor—from painting as he used to, to talking or reading. [...]

[...] The same applies to what I said about getting up and down from the floor. [...]

[...] Beneath our living room windows, a carpenter pounded on an outside door frame as he repaired damage done to the ground floor of the house by the flood of last June [see the 613th session in Chapter One]. Beside this, the sound of additional hammering inside the house rose up through our floor; but none of this lasted long or interfered with the session.)

[...] A visit to a third or second floor.