“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(We would like to insert a note here to Roger, to the effect that we would like him to go over the two sessions and give us a detailed written summary of the data given through Jane, in answer to the mathematical questions he sent Jane. [...] Jane’s mathematical knowledge and vocabulary [and mine] is so limited that any valid [or invalid?] data obtained in trance by Jane, on this subject, is of interest to us; the more we learn about these two sessions, the easier it will be for us to interpret another facet of trance experience.

(A curiosity: Carl Watkins said he felt there was a definite mass change in Jane when she was speaking as Seth. [...] But the floor did not creak when Jane rocked as herself after 10:45 PM. [...] Jane weighs 105. [...]

(Once again Jane spoke on her own in delivering tonight’s data, and toward the end of this session we began to get glimmering of what was going on. A more personal and emotional atmosphere began to enter in that was revealing to us; in these situations Jane is learning control even while she is in trance.

(Jane paused, then said: “I don’t know. [...] Then the center is the vortex,” and Jane made a pointing gesture into the middle of the image she had been drawing in the air, eyes closed.)

[...] Jane was upset, so upset that at first she couldn’t let Seth through, even though she wanted to. [...] I should add here that the 105th session dealt with the death of Jane’s mother, as well as Jane living to an advanced age. The mother’s death has not yet occurred, Seth saying that the information was by way of allowing Jane to prepareherself for the shock of her mother’s death. The subject had been brought up by severalvivid dreams and psychological time experiences Jane had had concerning her mother. While giving this 105th session, Seth had also had trouble getting the information through, ascribing the difficulty to Jane’s ego. [...]

[...] The conversation among the four of us touched upon many things, including the news Jane received from her publisher that her ESP book is set for publication on May 16,1966. During the evening we played some tapes also, and among these was one of the recordings Jane made of G. K. Chesterton’s poem Lepanto; Jane was in a trance state while reading this, apparently in a close approximation of the voice of her now dead friend, Father Trainor. [...] Jane has experienced this same phenomenon several times while reading this work, and it is dealt with in the 131st and 158th sessions.

[...] He proceeded to explain that Jane had indeed distorted her personal information. Subconsciously, Seth said, Jane was aware that the death of her grandfather, whom she had loved, was early next month, March. The grandfather had died of tuberculosis, hence Jane producing a distorted reference to a “breathing difficulty.” [...] Jane did not know this offhand consciously, Seth said, but had the records to prove it, and subconsciously was well aware of it.

[...] In the 105th session, among others, he stated that Jane’s death was not “to occur for many years.” In our immediately past lives, spent mainly in Boston in pre-Civil War days, Jane lived to be 82 or 83 as a woman medium, and I lived to be 63 as an Episcopalian minister. [...]

(This is surely excellent news, I told Jane. [...] The good news is that Toni, the night aide, had suggested that Jane see if she could work the nurse’s call button. [...] Neither had Jane. [...] Excellent, Jane. [...]

(Jane was doing well when I got to 330; her catheter is working okay. [...] Jane went to hydro this morning. [...] Some on the back are reduced to pinpoints, Jane said. [...]

(Once again I turned Jane on her left side. [...] As Jane was having dessert we watched the shuttle craft land in California—still a thrilling site even after so many have taken place. After her cigarette following dessert, I read the prayer with Jane, then left for the house at 7:05 PM. [...]

(Jane ate a good lunch. All was quiet in the halls re Teresa and Christine, though before Jane was through the emergency alarm sounded by the elevators outside our door. [...]

(Jane and I left F. Fell’s office, where the 360th session had been held, at about 11:45 AM, with an appointment to meet Mr. Van Over at about noon. [...] At his office Jane was informed that a phone call awaited her from the Alan Burke TV show; a Mr. Shapiro was on the line at that moment. Jane spent some fifteen minutes explaining to him why she did not want to be on the Burke show.

(There are no verbatim quotes here from Seth, since Jane obtained her information from him in a different way. [...] Mr. Van Over had much interesting information to impart; and also, much of what he had to say about the way mediums operate struck responsive notes within us, since we had seen the same things transpiring within, and in connection with, Jane.

(As in Frederick Fell’s office that morning, Jane now announced that Seth was about and that she was capable of holding a session. [...] Jane then said she thought she might be able to give Seth’s data in a different way than she usually did. [...]

(Jane was also encouraged when Ray Van Over told her that many mediums operated in the fashion she contemplated. This new departure was not particularly easy for Jane, and none of us wanted her to overdo it, but it was quite successful. [...]

[...] Jane will probably be able to receive me direct. (Jane dictates:) In either case, naturally, contact is not possible at all times. [...]

(“Ace seemed to like the outline idea for a book on ESP that Jane sent to them. [...]

(“Will this material we are accumulating through you help Jane in doing the book?”)

(Jane received not only the answer to this question before the board transmitted it, but the question itself before I had either voiced it aloud or written it down.

(We think also that Seth’s statement above might refer to letter #4, written by Jane on January 25. At the time she wrote this letter Jane had yet to receive letter #2, and thus did not know F. Fell would be out of NYC until February 7. Actually Jane’s letter #4 was never answered by mail. It was discussed in the telephone call between Jane and F. Fell on February 8. This is the call discussed in the notes on page 269 of the 232nd session. And again, the connection here with the envelope object is the January 25 date on which Jane wrote letter # 4, and the January 25 postmark on the object.

[...] This is a connection growing out of letter #4, written by Jane on January 25, which is the postmark date on the experimental object. [...] The letter was answered by telephone in the call of February 8, between Jane and F. Fell. Jane said the passage-of-time reference grows out of Mr. Fell’s questions as to when she was coming to New York, and her reply that she saw no use in it until the ESP book was out; then, in May, she wanted to be in NYC to help with publicity. Thus a year or so is involved from the time F. Fell agreed to publish the book and Jane began her final draft of it. The “meeting” grows out of Mr. Fell’s reference that in this telephone call of February 8, he felt he was getting acquainted with Jane as a person, meeting her personally; also that he looked forward to their meeting in May.

(It should be noted here that Jane spent most of the day working on the article for Fate Magazine, dealing with Seth and the envelope experiments. [...] Jane spent much time going over past envelope experiment results. [...] He has also said in the past that this kind of work on Jane’s part can lower the level of her results.

[...] Jane speculated that it could refer to the age of either the publicity director of F. Fell, or to Rhoda Monks, the author of letter # 2. Jane telephoned Frederick Fell on February 8th, and in so doing spoke first to Rhoda Monks; to Jane she sounded as though she could be about that age.

(Phyllis, the nurse, hadn’t taken care of Jane lately. She was assigned to her room today, though, and this morning as she began working with Jane she commented several times of the marked improvement in Jane’s ability to move, and the rate at which her decubiti are healing. Jane said Phyllis volunteered the comments without being asked. Indeed, I saw that Phyllis had put much smaller patches on the ulcer on Jane’s knee, her elbow, and so forth. [...]

(After lunch I reminded Jane that a very important point to remember is the return, the beginning, of a number of her automatic gestures and impulses that she’d let go years ago. [...] Jane does hold the cup now, but wants to hold it for the entire operation now, she says, which takes several minutes. [...]

(I turned Jane and massaged her with Oil of Olay as usual. [...] I love you, Jane.)

[...] One of them was one of the last I’ve painted before Jane went into the hospital. [...]

(The 78th envelope object was a shopping list I had written out earlier today for Jane, but which Jane did not see. [...] See Jane’s supplementary list, this page also.)

(The list represented numerous small things we had needed for some days, but Jane had been prevented from picking them up because of steady rain while I was at work. The list grew and indeed Jane was to get some items and perform some chores I had forgotten to put on the list. [...] See Jane’s list on page 190.)

[...] Jane did visit the art shop where I buy my paints. [...] Not on the list, but bought by Jane Tuesday were four transistor radio batteries. [...] See Jane’s list, page 190, also.

(One of Jane’s chores Tuesday, not on the list but performed along with the listed items, was to mail a package to Sarah Bernard, who along with her husband visited us from North Carolina over last weekend. [...] Jane had made her own list of errands to run Tuesday, and this included a visit to the post office to buy stamps, as well as mail the package. See Jane’s list, page 190 also.

(Jane was angered by this material [the second batch; I’d already sent Tam the first communication, asking for his help], and decided to call the medium, Thomas Massari, since a number was listed. [...] Jane talked to Carole, the medium’s wife who works with him, and stated clearly that she didn’t want others claiming to speak for her Seth—who, incidentally, had told us years ago that he spoke through no one else but Jane. [...] I’d been concerned lest Jane become involved in an unpleasant situation that would have repercussions via symptoms —the idea of publicity, of public display, which she doesn’t want—just when we were trying to learn more about the subject as she reacted to it. [...]

(It turned out that the wife claimed her husband was not trying to capitalize on Seth, that they both respected highly the Seth material, and that as we had suspected he had written Jane several years ago telling her about his Seth. Jane had told him then that he wasn’t speaking for her Seth. Jane told Carole that it was okay to use the Seth name as long as claims weren’t made that the two Seths were one and the same, especially the Seth who was producing the Seth books. Jane was reassured that no such claims were being made. [...]

(Then, not long before the session this evening, I mentioned to Jane my question about the Sinful Self’s reaction to our latest efforts. We haven’t seen the kind of physical response we want yet, and I wanted to know if our efforts were prompting the Sinful Self to step up its own protective behavior to keep Jane “under control.” I explained to Jane that my own idea of why Seth’s statements over the years, that she was on the way to recovery, were always negated was that these very statements alerted the Sinful Self to redouble its efforts to prevent Jane’s recovery because of its own fears. [...]

[...] I’m still shocked to realize that while I was laboring over Mass Events, and Jane was doing God of Jane, that those two books had stirred up even more resistance on the part of that personified Sinful Self, and that when they were finished we were then confronted with a new barrage of symptoms that ended up restricting [and protecting?] Jane’s physical manipulability even more. [...] Yet I try to accept Jane as she is and myself as well.)

[...] Jane immediately thought of this diagram when she read over Seth’s data. [...] Jane believes that she quite possibly made the diagram on the same day she typed up page 80, which was used as envelope object. [...] It is one Jane made to help her see clearly certain points involving the whole self, and waking and dreaming states. There was much handwritten copy beneath it. Jane located the diagram immediately after this session. [...]

(Jane believes the term “disheveled” refers to herself here. [...] This dream, over a period of a couple of years during her childhood, had a powerful effect upon Jane; she has talked about it ever since I have known her. In the dream Jane constructed a set of games, involving physical apparatus like swings and jungle gyms, in a section of the playground where in physical life none existed. The morning after one of these dreams Jane would hurry to the playground before going to school, to investigate to see if by chance there were swings, etc., in that particular section of the playground. [...]

[...] Jane was dissociated as usual. [...] Jane said that during one of the longer pauses she felt Seth trying to get at the name Nostratious from the earlier note data. [...] In an earlier session Seth told us Jane had been a medium in her Boston life, and that she had misused her abilities. [...]

[...] Jane thinks that here Seth was trying to get her to say that an artistic endeavor, meaning the dream book, was involved with the object. [...] She is the wife of Ernfred Anderson, a sculptor who was director of the art gallery where Jane worked part-time for several years. In the chapter five connected with the object, Jane uses a dream of Ernfred’s to make a certain point.

In 1931 in Saratoga Springs, New York, Jane’s father, Delmer Roberts (or Del) chose to exercise the probability that he would leave his wife Marie and their daughter Jane, who was not yet three years old. Marie’s mother, Mary Finn, called Minnie, lived with the family and often served as Jane’s nanny. Jane was a second child following her mother’s earlier miscarriage. [...] Jane and I came to believe that it was hardly accidental that her mother quickly became bedridden—for life—following the departure of her husband. [...] The young Jane spent almost two years in a Catholic orphanage for women while her mother was hospitalized. Some of the housekeepers had been—and some still were—prostitutes, Jane told me. They took care of Marie’s physical needs—tasks that in her later teens Jane would often take care of herself. [...]

Nor am I trying to justify class behavior by noting that Jane and I and our guests were much better behaved during the Friday-night gatherings in our apartment. [...] All knew of Jane’s abilities, of course, her growing career with its attendant publicity, but that was only a minor subject amid wide-ranging discussions. [...] Sue Watkins, a dear friend who was to write several books about Jane’s work with the Seth material, lived just down the street for a while before moving to the country. (Sue’s latest, Speaking of Jane Roberts, is crowded with much frank and loving information about Jane and me that I have no room to go into here.) Peggy Gallagher and her husband Bill worked for the Elmira Star-Gazette; as a reporter Peg wrote several well-received articles about Jane and the Seth material. [...] Especially as we came to realize that our having such friends made up for interactions with others that Jane and I had largely missed out on in our own earlier relationships. [...]

[...] It didn’t occur to Jane and me to even ask. [...] So with our obvious consent and the great variety of his very intelligent and fluent discourses, Seth became the discarnate entity who spoke through Jane for the next 20 years and eight months. [...] Not only because of Jane’s intense early fears in this lifetime, I felt, but also because of past lives, as Frank Watts had indicated. [...] Jane was living her challenges just like each one of us does, and her efforts were inextricably bound up with the world even as, I was sure, we were creating our human versions of the earth and its own reality. This taught us that even with Jane’s talents there was more, always more, to create and to learn from. [...] Like each one of us, Jane as a physical creature still had to travel her literal paths to experience and knowledge.

Reading these private sessions, one can legitimately ask: “Well, if Jane Roberts was so smart and Seth was so great with all of that personal stuff, why did she come down with the symptoms to begin with? Why couldn’t he cure her, or at least help her?” My answer right here is that those questions were and still are answered to the best of the abilities of Jane, Seth, and myself in these private sessions, even while I keep in mind Frank Watts’s references to Jane’s “Timidity has roots of rage.” [...] Part of the answer, as I’ve already noted, is that because of her strong fears from early childhood on, Jane did not allow Seth to tell us all he could have. [...] But again and again I felt, I knew, that reincarnational factors were involved, concerning not only Jane, Seth, and me, but a number of other “past” personalities and influences from any of the three of us, and in various camouflage time frames. [...] I didn’t berate Jane to open up more psychically. [...]

[...] He also said Jane should use suggestion to teach herself to sleep without a pillow. [...] When I remarked that I often woke up to notice that Jane was sleeping without a pillow, having pushed it aside in her sleep, Seth said this was an indication that her subconscious knew what it was doing. I sleep with a heavier pillow than Jane uses, and sometimes use two; Seth said my reasons were different than Jane’s and that in this case the pillows were not a hindrance.

(Jane said that out of all the connections we made, practically all of them referred to my tracing-paper drawing rather than to the actual envelope object itself. [...] Jane knows him of course, and likes him; yet the fact that I made the tracing-paper drawing evidently exerted a stronger pull emotionally. Perhaps this diverted Seth/Jane’s focus from the envelope object to a closely related object. As stated, Jane didn’t know the two drawings existed.

(I discussed with Seth the surprise with which Jane and I have watched young people take to his ideas on time, dreams, clairvoyance, telepathy, etc.; with this I speculated as to the reaction of Jane or myself had we been introduced to such ideas at the age of 20 or so. Seth said there was no cause for surprise here, that young people are intuitively aware of much more than one gives them credit for, and that when Jane and I meet young people who express interest we should help them by recommending books, giving our own ideas, etc.

[...] Jane was dissociated as usual. [...] Jane had the idea that Priestley and our unknown commentator were contemporaries. [...] Jane said she had the personal association of Norway when she heard herself giving the data on ice, regarding the name.

[...] Shortly after that Cathy and another girl came in and turned Jane on her side. [...] Jane said she really cried out loud—calling my name out to help her get well, and so forth. [...] “I need to give myself a good kick in the ass,” Jane replied, and asked Cathy to turn her back on her back. The crying went on after that, too, but then, before midnight, Jane said, the period of blueness was gone. [...]

[...] Lynne came in to take Jane’s blood pressure. Jane said she was the one who’d told her when she first was assigned to 330 that when Jane was transferred, other people wouldn’t have time to give her a smoke, etc.

[...] I read the session to Jane. [...] I asked Jane if Seth’s use of the word “explosive” was apropos, and she said it pretty well was. [...]

[...] A young male nurse or aide came in to take Jane’s temperature and pulse. [...] Jane laughed after he’d left. [...]

(The session came about after Jane had played portions of the tape of the 170th session for the group. [...] Playing the tape was an attempt to answer some of their questions, and in this Jane and I were following Seth’s advice of the 246th session. During that session Seth suggested Jane and I do all we can to inform others who are interested in matters psychic. [...]

(Friday afternoon Jane had not been feeling particularly well, but did not tell me. [...] In fact, the session was cut short by Jane’s illness. A long break was taken after the first delivery; Jane’s voice was good, her points very emphatic, and her eyes wide open some of the time as she answered questions. [...]

[...] The session was not actually a long one, and ended in Jane’s physical illness. [...] The stage had been set through conversation and the use of the tape, and I thought Seth made his appearance with the subconscious permission of Jane and me. [...]

[...] The gist of tonight’s material on this subject was that Bill allowed his intuitions enough freedom so that he was able to see the apparition for over an hour and to make several drawings of it; by the same token Jane and I were unable to see the apparition because we tried to intellectualize it. Later in the 68th session however I did see, along with Bill, a very striking change in Jane’s physical features. [...]

(Jane had some other excellent news. [...] She told Jane the ulcers had diminished in size by at least half — and she went to get a measuring device like a micrometer to check the shrinkage. Yet another nurse had said the other day that the drainage had worsened, a statement Jane had taken exception to, as had I.

[...] I read yesterday’s session to Jane, after she couldn’t do it. [...] I’d started coughing after eating half of one of the candies I’d bought Jane for Valentine’s Day. [...]

(I described my dream of the other day, which I’d already told Jane about: I’d been sitting on our couch with Jane and our neighbor, Joe Bumbalo. [...]

(4:33 p.m. “That makes that a pretty good little dream, then,” I told Jane, for in the dream she, too, had been fully recovered. Jane did remember my telling her about the dream earlier this week. [...]

[...] While Jane used her pendulum I gave suggestions, after reading this session to her. We went over what we had learned through Jane’s pendulum about an innocent remark of mine, that Jane didn’t have to ask Eleanor to return the script of Rich Bed after a two-week period. By this I wanted to show Jane that I wasn’t trying to tell her how to run things—but seemingly this remark instead rearroused Jane’s fears that she couldn’t insist upon action from Eleanor so quickly. Jane wants action.

[...] Jane typed out a couple of pages. The last paragraph was new: she felt she couldn’t pressure Eleanor because Dick was publicizing Jane’s books. [...] I suggested a two-week deadline; then Jane would ask for the return of Rich Bed if she’d had no word from Eleanor. While Jane used the pendulum I gave some suggestions. Jane took a nap while I finished cleaning up the living room.

(This brief session was held to help deal with Jane’s recurring tooth symptoms. [...] I finally asked Jane after lunch if she could have a session regardless of whether she was bothered [as she was at the time of the session, to a lesser degree].

[...] In the middle of the afternoon Jane had a return of them to a lesser degree. [...] All of the reasons had to do with Eleanor and Rich Bed, and Adventures, Tam, Jane’s feelings of being cut off by Eleanor and Dick, etc. [...]

(“The impression now of looking down, from a high position…” This is an excellent description of my position in the second-story studio, looking quite straight down as I sketched Jane on the lawn. [...] Jane had an image in connection with this data, which is explained below. At the time I made the drawing I wondered if Jane would sense the fact even though she didn’t see me. Jane paused noticeably before she continued.

[...] Jane said the unpleasant event was the fact that earlier two neighborhood children had been quite noisy and active running about our yard; she had wanted to go sun herself after lunch, but put off the expedition until the children had gone, by 3:00 PM. [...] Also, the same two children had been romping through Jane’s freshly spaded garden out back, which did not cheer her up. The garden site is about 25 feet from where Jane sat while I sketched her.

(After the experiment, and after we had interpreted the data, Jane recalled one impression she had which she had not mentioned. [...] Looking at the drawing, Jane felt it applied to the radiating lines on the crown of the straw hat she wore as I sketched her. We think this legitimate for Jane uses such calligraphy in her paintings.

(Jane confirmed that she did not like the “spiritual guide” connotation. Seth’s material upon resumption stems from the fact that Jane, housecleaning lately, had switched our bed from a north-south axis to east-west. [...]

[...] Lorrie came in to take Jane’s blood pressure. [...] Jane broke off at once to speak in a conversational tone. Lorrie is the gal who, with a student nurse, broke Jane’s leg when turning her, when showing the student how to do it. [...] After she left I read the last paragraph to Jane. [...]

[...] Jane now said that her reference yesterday to an unexpected visitor probably referred to Peggy G’s visit today. [...] I’d scanned the letter while Peggy was present, but hadn’t made the rather obvious connection then, nor had Jane. “It makes your prediction pan out,” I said to Jane. [...] See the correlations?” Jane did. [...]

(What a comedy of errors, I told Jane. [...] I told Jane I hoped the whole episode served as a warning as to what hospitals were really like, and the well-meaning but misguided people who worked in them. Jane answered my question about whether Fred had any idea he was giving out rotten suggestions about arthritis by saying that it never occurred to him—or any other doctor. [...]

[...] Interesting material, I told Jane. [...] I interpreted the information as Seth’s way of telling us that those lagging portions of Jane’s psyche were now embarked on their journey to catching up with those other portions that were way ahead—meaning that the psychic abilities were the leaders in Jane’ case. [...]

(On the spur of the moment Jane agreed to see what she could get on her own, without Seth. [...] Jane sat at the living room table with Jerry opposite; I sat nearby taking notes. What follows is not verbatim, since Jane spoke quite rapidly at times, but is close to it, and the correct meaning of what Jane said is always given. [...]

(Now Jane suddenly pounded her left fist on the table so hard that the cups and saucers and other objects jumped violently. [...] I was instantly concerned lest Jane physically injure her hand, so hard were the blows, several now in succession. It is here that Jane was someone else, at least briefly; Jerry later said she had the same feeling, and that Jane’s gestures and voice and manner, including head shaking and language, were those of Billie.

(Jerry said that emotionally Jane acted much like Billie, that there was good contact here, and that in the fight scene she thought that Jane was Billie. [...] Jane rubbed her right hip as she talked, and Jerry said that Billie had a bad hip in the same area, and rubbed it also as Jane had done.

[...] Jane’s voice trailed off and she came slowly out of trance. Jerry and I had said nothing while Jane had been speaking. [...] As soon as she said this, Jane asked her not to say any more at this time, and I agreed.

(Jane told me that Fred Kardon was in to see her this morning. [...] Jane said she explained some of the insurance situation. [...] Jane wasn’t sure when he was leaving, but it’s probably tomorrow morning, or even tonight. [...]

(Phyllis took care of Jane this morning. [...] She told Jane that all the kids on the floor really admire her for the way she “withstood all that pain and agony.” [...] Jane laughed and said, “Phyllis I haven’t had any antibiotics for months. [...]

(At 4:25 Phyllis cleaned Jane’s ears at her request—and with the swab drew out of my wife’s left ear the drainage tube that she’d had inserted almost two years ago. [...] Then when she changed the patch on Jane’s nose, that protects against the hard bridge of her glasses, Phyllis discovered that the irritated and sore nose had healed itself under the patch, unknown to all, since the patch has been there a long while. [...] Jane wears her glasses many hours a day, though she still takes them off when she sleeps, she said. [...]

(However, this morning, Jane said, Fred was amazed at the way the large ulcer on the outside of her right knee is healing itself. Jane told him she wants her legs to straighten enough so that she can start sitting up. [...]