“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(For the 10th envelope test I used a label from a bottle of Ballantine Ale. See the tracing on page 289. Jane and I met the Gallaghers accidentally at a dancing establishment last Saturday evening. I absent-mindedly peeled the label from a bottle as we sat talking in the darkened room, then decided on the spur of the moment to use it for a test. I wondered if friendly impressions might attach themselves to the label. I took care to slip the wet label in a coat pocket when neither Jane or the Gallaghers were looking, and as it developed Jane had no idea of the test object for the session.

(The label contains a variety of shapes and designs. See the tracing on page 289. The connection with a fabric can be the coat pocket in which I carried the label home. Our table at the dancing establishment Saturday night had a top of simulated wood grain. The house can be our own, the several people of course Jane and me and Bill and Peggy Gallagher; the Gallaghers were with us Saturday night when I picked the label as a test object.

(Designs are repeated in the label, but no blocks appear. The journey by automobile can refer to our driving home Saturday evening. There is an 1840 date on the label, but not 1965. I was of course involved with the test object, and my initials are R.B., but this can apply to any test object. We don’t know which “another” Seth refers to. The label bears parallel oval lines which can suggest a road or a path.

(The Christmas reference is an interesting one, and can be seen when one notes that the label is printed in red and green, on yellow stock. Jane said also that to her the XXX symbol on the label means Christmas. We do not know to what “something dark of rectangular shape” refers to, unless it’s the shape of the table we sat at in the dancing establishment.

[...] They need to rise up like new planets into your own consciousness, and you need to treat them gently and not give them labels or names. So we are leading you away from labels and names, and for awhile you may feel confused or lonely, for you only feel safe when you can name an experience. [...]

What is your experience at any given time without reliance upon words and labels? [...] We want to scramble up your perceptions, so that you can experience experience and not place curtains of labels between you and your own feelings and own knowledge. [...]

[...] For when you consider an experience, you apply words to it much more than feelings: “Does this word apply, or does that word apply, or what is it; and without its label, dare I experience this unknown?”

Do not label yourselves, for then you often try to live up to those labels, and they can be highly limiting. [...]

[...] You should also avoid labels, for these can stereotype your perception of yourself.

[...] All of these are labels, and quite relative. [...]

[...] Again, labels are somewhat implicated, for you each thought you worked well with the pendulum, but that Ruburt did not. [...]

[...] The names help physicians to categorize and treat, but the names are also dangerous when they are used as labels.

[...] By labeling a group of symptoms you add to their idea of permanence, and give a name to certain aspects of bodily activity, distinguishing them from other activities and therefore giving them rather dangerous focus. [...]

[...] These imbalances may be labeled with a name also. [...]

The label often helps the individual adopt the position or role of a “sick person”, in quotes, rather than of a well person momentarily indisposed. [...]

[...] Many heterosexual relationships are also denied to persons labeled as not being heterosexual, by themselves or society. People so labeled often feel propelled out of sheer confusion to express their love only through sexual acts. [...]

Many men, labeled homosexual by themselves and others, want to be fathers. [...]

Ruburt (Jane) today received a letter from a man who would certainly be labeled a schizophrenic. [...]

[...] In your society, such activities are, in a way that completely escapes me, somehow under the label of humanitarianism!

[...] Science, if it bothered, might label him a fool, but fundamental religion could label him as evil, or claim his work was inspired by the devil in Christian terms, and so the old beliefs in the Sinful Self or evil self were activated. [...]

Even later, as he began writing science fiction, that writing fell under the then less envious label of science fantasy (underlined), which was not considered as pure in science-fiction circles. [...]

Unfortunately, when man became a labeller he also made maps, so to speak, of great complexity, categorizing various diseases with greater effectiveness than ever before. [...]

The naming and labelling of “diseases” is a harmful practice that to a large extent denies the innate mobility and ever-changing quality of the psyche as expressed in flesh. [...]

(For the envelope test this evening I chose a piece of an old furniture label that Jane and I had peeled from the back of a bureau a couple of weeks ago. [...] I found the label, or rather part of it, in my studio this afternoon and decided to use it for the test. [...]

(The label was brittle and quite brown with age, and broke apart when removed. [...]

(Seth’s impressions do appear to be far-ranging, in connection with the old bureau and its label. [...]

[...] A small boy might be caught in a lie, for example, and therefore labeled by an adult in the angriest of terms as a liar. [...]

[...] It might help if you imagine balloons, one labeled insurance, another health, and so forth — then imagine them floating away, or popping open, or whatever. [...]

[...] Afterward she tried the brand of liquid vitamins I’d bought on the way home last night; she said they tasted better than the hospital’s brand — but I didn’t see vitamin C or E listed on the label. [...]

[...] In other words, I told Jane, she doesn’t have to surmount any physical debilitating disease that has bacteria or germs or microbes attached to it, and is labeled “incurable.”

[...] Some people, who would rate quite high on any hypothetical emotional-achievement test, might very possibly under certain conditions be labeled as retarded, according to the dictates of your society. [...]

Other people may be sophisticated, brilliantly aware of their own feelings and those of other people, intuitively knowledgeable in the handling of relationships, even, as adults, exquisite parents—yet they may be labeled as retarded if they do not live up to certain artificial intellectual standards. [...]

Children who are labeled mentally deficient or even called idiots, can often grow and develop far beyond medical science’s suppositions — particularly if they are aided by loving parents who constantly provide stimulation and interest.

[...] I do not put labels on my own theories, and I explain — or I try to explain — my most ‘profound’ statements by adding a dash of zest, a smidgen of humor, an egotistical touch of humility. [...]

The boy was filled with guilt, but a guilt that had no name, no label—a psychological guilt that was the result of his upbringing, and that perhaps involved the existence of a brother. [...]

[...] How can I die without becoming ill, which I abhor, or without having my death labeled a suicide before my children?

[...] In still greater terms, each life experience is unique so that it is literally impossible to put labels, such as “positive” or “negative” upon any aspect of experience, so keep this in mind also.

[...] It didn’t occur to us to label any of those events as “psychic” until the event of Idea Construction. [...]

An analyst might consider Augustus as schizophrenic and label him neatly, but such terms are basically meaningless. [...]