“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

For your purposes the house is worth the price. In the market, in Frank’s terms, the house is worth perhaps $38,500, or $39,000. That price will also go up. Though the rooms are smaller there is in a strange way greater manipulability, psychically speaking. A definite change in living patterns will result, and of attitude, that would not happen in the Foster house. This also means that greater adaptability is required, but it will be to the good. The whole difference here is the quality of nature as it surrounds both houses. The one invites you to roam, the other to hide. Both houses have Sumari characteristics, but in different combinations. You both need the sun.

The Cobbles East house would not content you, though it is a quite adequate house, and elegant in its way inside. You would feel cramped, however. The hill house, because of its location, adds a spaciousness that is inside the Foster house, but either way you have an open feeling in terms of expansion.

The formality of the position of the house upon its hill provides a kind of structure of its own. The same house on low land would not suffice, you see. It is the entire picture that is important. There are good paintings to be found from the house, in terms of landscapes, and natural walks. You would end up, I imagine, tearing down a wall.

The private-type yards, the house on its own knoll, say clearly “We are not neighborhood barbecue people.” There is not an easy access from house to house. People who relate in a cozy, more or less openhearted way with their neighbors like adjoining patios. They may put up a screen for privacy, but all in all they prefer more or less constant neighborly give-and-take.

[...] The hill house has its own kind of inner light. This is not possessed by the Sayre house, and I recommend against that house regardless of price. [...] Nor will either of you ever — particularly you, Joseph — be satisfied with sharing a driveway.¹ The hill house, because of its location, adds a spaciousness that is inside the Foster Avenue house; but either way, you have an open feeling in terms of expansion.

Now: The hill environment is as important to your painting as the ready-made workroom in the Foster Avenue house. [...] The sunny nature [of that house], regardless of what Ruburt thinks now, will help him creatively and physically — but the hill house represents a decision to face the world while maintaining certain necessary and quite reasonable conditions. [...] A definite change in living patterns and of psychic attitude will result, that would not happen in the house on Foster Avenue.

(Seth had used more than half of Monday’s session to discuss our house hunting in connection with Sayre and Foster Avenue. [...] 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.

Houses themselves have a quality, a life, that is picked up by potential buyers. Certain houses repel you and Ruburt. They will positively attract others, however, so the qualities in the houses that appeal to you two are precisely the ones that have turned off others, and prevented their sale.

(These notes give me a chance to hint at another in the series of “house connections” that Jane and I have become so much aware of this month — for there is a close professional relationship between the owner of the Foster Avenue house and the real estate agency through which we’re buying the house on the hill. Jane and I had heard of this association in a remote way, but it had no meaning for us until we committed ourselves to the hill house; the agency concerned is but one of many we’d contacted; yet also involved is our friend Debbie, who works for another real estate firm, and who had first called our attention to the hill house. There are more intertwinings here [including some art elements] than it’s necessary to describe; but studying just this one complex house connection, then seeing how it combines with some of the others we’ve become conscious of; leaves Jane and me more than a little bemused by this interlocking reality we’re creating.²

1. I want to note here that at the same time Jane and I decided to buy the hill house, we learned that the house next door, to the west, would soon be for sale; because of a job transfer its owner would be moving with his family to California this summer. [...] Although Jane and I liked the place well enough, we had no doubt that the hill house was the one for us.

In the 737th session, after 11:55, Seth mentioned the “other dentist” who lived and worked around the corner from the apartment house Jane and I moved into in 1960, upon our arrival in Elmira. We soon became acquainted with him and his family on a very casual basis, since the back of his property abuts the west yard of the apartment house. [...] Then on Thursday we learned that he’d bought the place across the street from the hill house. [...]

(On Friday, February 21, Jane and I not only saw the hill house from the inside for the first time — but decided to buy it. [...] Of course we knew what Seth had suggested during last Wednesday’s session, and his advice was valuable; at the same time we’d been strongly inclined to make the purchase after looking at the house anew that Wednesday afternoon. [...]

Neither house expresses your own particular individualistic ways of life, of course, but each one comes close enough to intrigue you, and either one could be made to suit your purposes quite easily. You were attracted also because the people who put their greatest imprint upon those houses so shared some of your tendencies. In the second house your ideas of privacy were shown to you, carried to an extreme, where the windows would not even open. In the first house the stairs to the second floor were purposely steep, and never altered, because no one was invited to view the private family bedrooms. [...]

7. Added later: See the notes on the hill house at the beginning of the 736th session. [...] 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.

(So far, Jane and I haven’t been able to find a home that we intuitively feel is the right one, although the place on Foster Avenue has intrigued us considerably since we first saw it on February 3. [Since then we’ve looked at many other houses.] Last Thursday afternoon [February 13], Jane was busy with her creative writing class so I went house hunting alone. Without feeling any great curiosity I checked out one place we’d seen before: the hill house. [...]

(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. [...]

At the time of the session I understood Seth to mean that the second house Jane and I looked at on April 25 was also my mother’s second choice of the day for us. Sometime later we began to wonder whether he might have meant that this second house had been Stella Butts’s next best choice for herself over the years, after Mr. Markle’s. We took the conservative approach; we decided this wasn’t likely. For not only would both houses have to be for sale at the same time, and not only would Jane and I have to inspect them on the same day — but of the hundreds of houses in Sayre, it would be necessary that these two had ranked first and second in my mother’s preference for many years. [...] We thought that the two houses were already involved in a remarkable-enough series of “coincidences.”

[...] Driving through Sayre,¹ Pennsylvania, one Sunday afternoon, Joseph noticed a house for sale in a neighborhood he knew — and remembered that it had belonged, in his memory, to a man of whom his mother had been fond. On impulse, Joseph had Ruburt call the real estate firm whose sign was on the house. The house was still owned by the man in question. [...]

(10:12.) Instead you have a rich interweaving of probabilities; for in one probability the two were indeed married, and that Stella [Butts] saw the house go to the eldest son (myself). In this probability, this Joseph instead comes upon the house of a relative stranger, finds it for sale, and can or cannot purchase it according to the new set of probabilities then emerging. [...] In this probability Joseph’s mother left little in financial terms, relatively speaking, and her house was sold. [...]

[...] Joseph and Ruburt were also shown a second house in Sayre — one a good deal cheaper, but generally much like the one in which Joseph’s mother lived in this life. They saw both houses on the same day. [...] An elderly couple recently moved from the second house to a home for the aged. [...]

[...] Today we had looked at a house in the country just outside Elmira. [...] The house belonged to an artist and schoolteacher who had left town for good; Jane had met him at the gallery, I had not. The house offered privacy but seemed to raise as many questions as it answered, one of them being that it was situated on a hillside and was accessible only by a very steep dirt road that was not maintained by either state or county.

If you purchase the house, you will paint two pictures in particular, landscapes in tempera, that will help set your name. The house itself is good, for it is high and near water. [...] You should not buy a house, even with much land, that is not near water, for it will not content you and you will give it up. [...]

The child who lived in the house until recently was somewhat disturbed, and had he lived there longer the house would not have remained psychically beneficial, but it is psychically beneficial now. [...]

[...] This is not a general statement, but applies to the specific house of which we speak. [...] A house psychically unsound would greatly cut down your ability to pay for it.

(The house that was for sale — and which we came to call the “hill house” — was empty and locked. [...] The house faced the south; before it in the valley lay Elmira itself; almost hidden by trees; beyond the city the hills rose in tiers. Streets — without sidewalks — passed the hill house on but two sides, at the southwest corner, and each one dead-ended less than a block away. In back of the house to the north and east, woods rolled up the gentle curve of the hill and over its top.

(Now Jane’s and my psyches were involved in this other-than-conscious activity concerning the hill house for 16 days from the time we first saw it. During that period we held the 737th session [on February 17], but since we weren’t consciously concerned with that particular place then, we neither talked about it nor asked Seth to comment; instead, on his own during the session, Seth discussed the house on Foster Avenue as representing a probability, and a pretty likely one, that we could choose to explore. [...] Jane and I were free to make our own joint decision — and all the while, both of us were unconsciously processing the hill-house situation.

[...] For a couple of pages of notes he discussed the house we’d looked at on Foster Avenue two days ago. This material came through even though we had our first viewing of the “hill house” yesterday; see the notes [added later] at the beginning of tonight’s session. [...] He helped explain the psychic attractions Jane and I feel for the house, without implying a commitment toward it [through purchase, for instance] in any way. [...]

(One of the first houses Jane and I looked at yesterday occupied a hill side corner lot in West Elmira, on a street we’d never been on before. [...] In fact, both houses are pictured, one above the other, on the same page of the catalog. [...]

(Certainly the house affair is a good demonstration of at least some of the elements contained within The “Unknown” Reality—But then, The “Unknown” Reality can just as well be translated in ordinary terms like houses and neighborhoods as any other way....)

[...] Now see the lists of our house connections.

(30 house ctns—737-14—[30]

40 house ctns—740-9—[over 40]

(10:00.) In your terms it seems that all of that had to happen before the house was put up for sale, so that Joseph, passing by only a few days ago, could see the sign and decide to look at the house. [...]

[...] In that reality Mr. Markle died before Joseph’s mother did, so there was no need for a Joseph, here, to even look for a house; he had one. [...] And in this reality [the one you and Ruburt know] Ruburt instinctively felt apart from that house.

[...] But more than that, the whole question of a house of that kind brought into their own lives questions of values and prerogatives that were of great importance. [...] Joseph was unconsciously aware of the first house [of the two in Sayre], and could have chosen not to drive down that particular street, for example. [...]

[...] It also shows that his desires for a house in Sayre (deeper and stronger) helped bring about certain events: He could have such a house if he wanted one.

The odds against such a “coincidence” developing would be astronomical — except that the Millers had lived in a neighborhood close to the hill house several years ago (when the acquaintanceship with Louise Akins had been made), had moved out of state, then returned to buy the house next door to us. The house connection is still unique, however, considering that in the hill house Jane and I found ourselves bracketed east and west by people who knew one of her early students — who had in turn mentioned Jane to them. [...]

[...] Why did Jane and I move into a neighborhood in which such a house connection could develop to begin with? Why was Frank Corio assigned the task of selling the house next door to us? Why did the Millers encounter him at just that particular time, and why was he, of all the real estate agents in Elmira, the one who succeeded in selling them the house they bought?

(Concerning Seth’s remark about “a simple move from one house to another” for Jane and me: This includes all of the other people involved, too. In the previous five sessions I’ve inserted just enough “house connections” to indicate what’s been materializing for us in this area, without digressing to write a much longer history. [...]

(Jane and I do not ascribe the elements making up our house adventures to that old catchall, “coincidence,” of course; at the same time we have no plans to statistically attempt anything with them either. [...] Truly, for myself the whole house thing had its origins in my early childhood, over half a century ago. [...]

[...] There are advantages and disadvantages in living in a house alone. Everyone in this apartment house is seldom in a bad mood at the same time, for example, so to some extent in periods of normal depression you are sustained by others, close by, who are not.

Some of these feelings are also projected upon the apartment house at large, and mask your deep love of your studio, despite all disadvantages.

[...] To you this apartment house and its grounds are considered in terms of land, and dwelling. [...]

[...] In a house you saturate the atmosphere until the air actually becomes almost an extension, electromagnetically, of your mental and psychic states.

[...] Do not buy a house with a dirt cellar. Do not buy a house heated by oil. [...] A house facing the east is good in your section of the country. Use your psychic abilities to ascertain the house’s atmosphere, by all means, and no matter how fine it seems, if you do not feel comfortable inside, do not buy it. [...]

[...] You are smart to buy a house in the early part of the year. After that there will be an erratic period, where briefly house prices will rise, only to fall again.

[...] You will find a house you like. [...]

[...] This is reported here for what it’s worth.) The house you choose will suit you. [...]

Each of you sees buying a house now as a threat, though you are at times tempted. You have always seen family life yourself as a threat to artistic production, and the first thing you would do if you had a house would be to build a studio outside of it. [...]

At the same time you think, for several reasons, that at your age you should have a house, privacy to work, a way even of proving to your brothers that you have as much as they. [...]

A house in town reminds you each of family living, and you of your neighborhood. [...]

[...] Thoughts of buying a house throw both of you into a quandary because they directly come in conflict with your private ideas about your work and purposes, and your places in the world.

[...] Think however in terms of what you want as far as a house is concerned, and not on any imagined problems or obstacles in your way. Take it for granted you can find a house you want and can afford.

A comparable attitude as the one you have would run this way: “I am sure I am going to move, but there is no house in front of me to move into, so obviously no such house exists.” [...]

I have not told you that there were physical signs as yet to see, any more than I have told you that you have already moved into another house, but both conditions do now exist.

13. During the 10:36 break for Session 740, which was held a couple of months ago, I wrote that the list of house connections associated with our move to the hill house had grown to over 40 items, “and continues to grow.” Jane and I have now accumulated more than 60 such interrelationships, and they range all the way from color and architectural similarities among the various houses we’ve either lived in, or felt strong emotional and psychic attachments for, to human connections like the following one. It’s neither the most inconsequential item on our list, or the most spectacular — but recently we learned through a close relative of the Steffans (I’ll call them), the couple from whom we bought the hill house, that at a small social gathering over two years ago Jane had spontaneously given something of a psychic “reading” for Mrs. Steffans. Moreover, this event had taken place in the apartment house we lived in on Water Street; not in our own quarters there, however, but in the apartment of another tenant whom we’ve known for a number of years.

[...] “But I don’t think I precognitively picked up that we were going to buy their house two years later, or anything like that. We didn’t know this place [the hill house] even existed then. [...]

Let me note at the end of this account that the mutual friend who introduced Jane and Mrs. Steffans has participated in some of our other house connections also — a function similar to the one enacted by our new acquaintance, Frank Corio, whom I referred to in Note 11 for Session 740. Jane and I saw this kind of situation develop with several other individuals also, once we began our active house hunting in Sayre, Pennsylvania, in April 1974.

In one reality, of course, the work was finished at the Foster Avenue house (in Elmira, New York). In another it was finished in Sayre (Pennsylvania).

Imagine the summer winds that blow over the land that now fills the interior of the house with scented air. Let the first house represent all negative ideas or constructions, and the new house represent the desired ideas or constructions. [...]

In your mind’s eye however imagine a run-down, shabby, deteriorating shamble of a house with rotting floorboards and sagging porches. [...] Then imagine a new house being built there, of your preferred choice, with all new materials, of splendid design, and see this always in your mind where before you saw the previous image.

[...] In the exercise you see the house can simply represent fear, for a basic therapeutic method, and the new house confidence.

[...] Any object you see can be used in place of the house. [...]

[...] For the test object I used a wallet identification card that I picked up two years ago in an empty house that Jane and I nearly purchased. Both of us had met the owner of the house, Jim Birch, a few times. He had changed jobs and left Elmira at the time we were interested in his house, in June 1964, however. Seth dealt with the purchase of this house in several sessions, saying it would be a good one for us psychically. [...]

[...] she said, referred to the flower garden at the Birch house we considered purchasing in June 1964. We spent several weekends at the house cleaning up, and Jane weeded the flower garden.

[...] referred, Jane said, to the traffic noise we became sharply aware of while working about the Birch house. Although situated on a hillside, the traffic noise seemed to roll up at us, and we used this as a reason for not buying the house. [...]

(The test object was among other papers that we cleaned up at the house, with the intention of mailing them to Mr. Birch’s new address in North Carolina; later we learned this wasn’t necessary and the papers lay forgotten in my file until I came across them the other day. [...]

Now there are several “house connections” here, involving David, the Steffanses, and ourselves. We actually bought the hill house through the real-estate agent for the Steffanses, a few months after they’d moved out of Elmira. [...] Jane and I think it most interesting that we were living in the same downtown apartment house as David was, and that Jane met—just that once—a person living in the house we were to buy two years later. [...]

2. For a brief description of Jane’s encounter with Mrs. Steffans, see Note 13 for Session 744, in Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality. Seth, and Jane and I, described a number of our house-hunting adventures in the two volumes of that work. [...] We think that the events surrounding our purchase of the hill house furnish many clues to the spontaneous and creative workings of individual consciousnesses in our chosen physical reality.

(After lunch today Jane and I were visited by our old friend David Yoder, who’s been in Florida recuperating from the heart bypass surgery he underwent early this year.¹ David brought news that was at first startling, then quickly developed into several conflicting emotions and ideas for us: He’d just learned from a relative of hers that a few weeks ago Mrs. Steffans [not her real name], the wife of the couple we’d purchased the hill house from in March 1975, had committed suicide at her home in a Western state while her husband was away on a business trip.

Her relative, David told us now, had informed him that Mrs. Steffans had suffered bouts of deep depression while living in the hill house. [...]

[...] Houses are to be entered—astral houses, physical houses, thought-form houses—they are to be entered. [...]

[...] A pink stucco house, two bedrooms in the rear, not a new house. A peculiarity on the left side of the house. [...] There is some space between the house and the next structure on the right. [...]

[...] Now I am facing the house. [...]