“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(After hanging upside down for a short but measurable length of time the table again descended. Later, Carl tried to consciously make the table describe the same upside-down movement, and discovered that he could not exert enough force while using the same grip on the table top edge. The best he could do was to get the table up to shoulder height at the most, and I believe this to be a somewhat generous estimate. Also Carl’s arm tired quickly, whereas before it had not. Was he dissociated to any degree when the table vaulted up?

(The twice-repaired table has been used in subsequent sessions, but very gingerly for it is now much weakened. Pressure has indicated itself to a small degree, but we have used little force to subdue it. We have tried a few pressure experiments, previously described, with it, very cautiously. We mourn the table’s withdrawal for obvious reasons. It is a good responder, and its spirit, A A, seemed quite pleased to communicate with us, in a most forceful manner. We want to keep the table to maintain this contact, even if casually, and for further study on pressure angles, etc. Also to use this table as a springboard for work with heavier, four-legged tables, etc.

(The table was active until after 1 AM. One other distinctive movement involved a seeming vault into the air while Carl held the table at arms length. This tipped the top vertically to the floor, and the other three present touched the top lightly. At first the table seemed to move Carl around in circles, continually being ahead of him, in that it ended up by twisting Carl’s arm awkwardly behind him; this made it very difficult for Claire, Jane and me to keep contact with the top. At the same time Carl insisted that he was not deliberately twisting the table this way around himself. The twisting was rapid.

(I stood back in a corner by the bookcase; the table had worked its way toward the bathroom door, which was closed. At the table were Bill Gallagher, with beside him Pat Norelli. Others were also at the table, but Bill and Pat were on the side showing the strong pressure. The pressure finally reached the point where Bill Gallagher could not force the third table leg back to the floor. As I recall, he was using a direct downward pressure, not the down-and-away pressure discussed earlier.

Now, beside the information given this evening, it is true that some tables will move more easily than others. [...] Your wooden table should be a good one. (Jane pointed toward our kitchen, where we have a small table we haven’t tried.) The small table is particularly good because it was built by its owner, whose own abilities are definite, though untrained. (Ruth Klebert’s table.)

(This evening before the session Jane tried to move a table by herself, with little success. At 9 PM I sat at the table with her, and we succeeded only in obtaining a couple of small movements.

[...] There is a flowing of energy, of psychic energy, from the sitters, that does indeed affect and alter that molecular construction of the table. In this method the impetus comes from survival personalities, acting directly through the physical mechanism of the most sensitive person at the table.

[...] These changes throw extra charge into the body, that leaps into the molecular structure of the table, causing a force field between the organism and the table.

(I have seen tables move a few times before, including the much heavier green table referred to in the session, but still find the movement of furniture weird when it begins, since none of us were making any obvious, overt attempts to move said table. [...] This is easy to do with a small table.

[...] At times the table tipped up on two legs, then would poise there, seemingly balanced by itself. 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. [...] There was no doubt about its existence, since the pressure required to level the table off was obvious to all. [...] Each time we pushed the table down, it rose up again at one edge. [...]

[...] The experiments with the table are most helpful, and I did indeed help him out on two occasions with the green table. (Jane pointed to the large heavy green table up by the living room windows.) He does not need my help with the small one, and the time and circumstances were not good on the other occasion when he requested my aid.

[...] 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. [...] During all of this the table was active to a greater or lesser degree, making it impossible to prop up a leg, say, with a shoe, etc. [...]

(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. [...] 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.

[...] Spontaneous Seth session, following a period of working with the table, in which pressure built up to the point where the table finally broke, working through A A)

You have seen the table move. [...] You must question: why did the table move?

[...] Reality is the table that moved, the table that shattered! [...]

(We thought an apt connection with scale would be the “balancing” of the table on its two south legs as the male and female trios sat before it. As stated, the first two times Bill, Don and I sat at the table we deliberately made the table tip; the last time however, with Jane added to the group, the table really tipped through subconscious pressure.

(Jane read aloud to the gathering an article in the November 1966 Fate Magazine titled Table Up! or How To Tilt a Table, by Georgia Mae Fields. This is an old children’s game, and we decided to try it with a card table. [...]

[...] Jane read the article aloud to us, then Bill, Don and I tried tipping the table first. We sat at the south end of the table and made the vacant north end rise as we chanted away, per instructions in the article. What the three women didn’t know at the time was that the three of us were helping nature out a little, making the free end of the table rise by conscious physical pressure from our hands.

[...] This is interesting, and we believe refers to a wicker upright armchair that one of us sat in when at the table tipping game the last time of the evening. [...] These three chairs were used by the male and female trios as they sat at the table. When a fourth member was added to the last table tipping of the evening, featuring Jane, Bill, Don and myself, the wicker armchair was pressed into use since it was the only one available except for a Kennedy rocker. [...]

(9:57.) To make this clearer, look at any table in the room before you. [...] Now for an analogy, imagine if you can that behind the table is another just like it, but not quite as physical, and behind that one another, and another behind that — each one more difficult to perceive, fading into invisibility. And in front of the table is a table just like it, only a bit less physical appearing than the “real” table — it also having a succession of even less physical tables extending outward. And the same for each side of the table.

(10:02 to 10:20.) There are also realities (pause), that are “relatively more valid” than your own; in comparison, strictly for an analogy, for example, your physical table would appear as shadowy in contrast, as [like] those very shadowy tables we imagine. [...]

(Jane, as Seth, reached across the coffee table between us, to take my half-full glass of beer. [...]

(“Ruburt’s impression of a table...and rounded objects and colored.” In the photo I am sitting at a drawing table. [...] The table data brings up another instance of the fine discrimination necessary to Jane in giving such experimental data. She said she had an impression of a table while speaking for Seth; not only this, but of a white table. In the envelope photo it can be clearly seen that my drawing table is covered with white paper, for cleanliness while working. [...]

Ruburt’s explanation of the table was correct. I did give him the white table, but he confused it with the white table in your room, knew that this was not the table to which I referred, made the correct distinction, but thought that the white indication did not belong.

(However, we also have a small coffee table in our apartment, and it is painted white. Jane said she thought of this table while speaking for Seth, yet knew it wasn’t the right table. [...]

(Ruburt’s impression is of a table next, and you may put this in parenthesis. [...]

[...] Underneath the table I found a large jagged piece of glass, close to a foot across, propped up against the inner table leg where I usually sit. In some strange quirk of speed and physics, this knife-edged piece had not only been blown into the kitchen, but had managed to turn nearly a right angle, missing Jane, in order to come to rest opposite her legs against the table’s leg. [...]

[...] At that time Jane was sitting at the kitchen table, perhaps seven feet from the open porch door. [...]

[...] I thought she may have yelled at the cats—but in the kitchen I saw that she was sitting at the table with shards of glass littering the rug at her feet. [...]

(We began by sitting at a small table in our living room. We had covered the table with a dark material. [...]

(Now, while Jane still sat with her left wrist pressed to the table, her hand, turning white in part again, rose several inches [perhaps three by my estimate] up from the table. [...]

(I asked Jane to lay her wedding ring on the table. [...]

[...] Jane, Bill and I hunched over the table, over the left hand. [...]

Now I am glad that you have all had such a jolly evening, and in the table’s energy I hope that you saw a reflection of your own (to Ron), and I hope that you realize, not looking at anyone in particular, that a playful answer will be given and long faces will get you nowhere. [...]

Now if you all want to play games some night, we will have some fun with the table. [...]

[...] Move yourselves and tables will take care of themselves. [...]

Then, with shades down and a candle in another part of the room we sat at big green table. [...] Now three or four of us definitely noticed a fog or mist in part of living room away from table, deeper in the interior of the room. [...] None was noticeable with lights on earlier, and the mist seemed to move, from one side of the coffee table to the other. [...]

Then we sat around coffee table with lights on, and lighted candle down to the end of the table. [...]

[...] Obviously we were trying for something—which is in itself suggestion, but on other times we’ve tried for example to get the table to move and it wouldn’t budge. [...]

(Later in the night the five of us stood around the heavy library table in my studio. We have wanted to try moving this table for some time. We felt vibrations in the table at times as we kept trying, but no other movements were obtained.)

The work with the table will continue and develop into other areas. [...] You will have no difficulty in finding tables to work with.

(I spent quite a few hours over the weekend putting the broken table together.)

[...] (Pause.) AA (the personality inhabiting the table) is also learning. [...]

(Last night Jane had a very successful table-tipping session with her ESP class. The table appeared to move and tilt although her hands barely touched its top. [...]

Now the late affairs with the table have been good training on Ruburt’s part, and given him a release of energies that is acceptable and beneficial. [...]

(“Do you want to say a few words about the table last night for Jane’s ESP students?”

(Last night Jane was especially aware of her success at concentration in getting the table to move.)

[...] You were pleased when Ruburt walked across the floor with his plunger, without the table, yet both of you expected him to walk down steps, small as they are, and walk around the car in the garage without his table, or there is something wrong. [...]

[...] Finally he felt the impulse to walk without the table, used the plunger as an aid, and did not need to put his weight upon it. [...]

[...] You were both pleased when Ruburt walked from the bathroom to the table with his plunger. [...]

[...] Both of you even refuse to think of using the table in the garage, so Ruburt forces his body into the most unnatural of positions so that he can lean upon the car. [...]

[...] In my school days I did not have a drawing table, but worked bent over at a card table in the front upstairs room, with a small drawing board in my lap, resting on the edge of the card table. [...]

[...] She said that while speaking as Seth about me, she saw me, within, seated at a table or desk in the front upstairs bedroom of my parents’ home in Sayre, Pennsylvania. I was not seated at a drawing table such as I now have.

[...] I see you bent over a table, either reading or drawing, in the front upstairs room.

[...] I did both at the card table. [...]

(When Bill, Don and I first tried tipping the table on October 7 we faked the results; this led to some rather vehement reactions on the part of the three women. Later in the evening we obtained legitimate results with the table; during one of these experiments the table told us that the communicator was Don Wilbur’s grandfather.)

(Jane said she had no idea of what Seth would talk about this evening, as she lay her glasses on the table at 9 PM. [...]

[...] Seth here refers to our table tipping experiments of Friday, October 7. That evening’s fun led to the successful 73rd envelope experiment of October 10. [...]

[...] You might ask the table for evidence some evening, and if there is a strong communicator you might get something of interest.

[...] I had her back in the living room, at the dining room table, within 10 minutes. She dozed, her lowered forehead nearly resting on her hands clasped on the table top. [...]

[...] Jane was quiet as she sat at the card table in the living room while I worked. [...]

[...] I moved her chair to the spot at which I sat at the card table, as she directed. A minute later I moved her back to her usual place at the dining room table, again as she directed. [...]

(By 11 PM I’d moved Jane in her chair many times from position to position at each table. [...] But I had to, I explained, in order to be sure her chair legs cleared the table legs. [...]

(Peggy and I had a couple of hurried conversations this afternoon, concerning Jane’s condition, and before leaving Peggy had her say to Jane as we sat at the card table. [...]

(I moved her in her chair over to the dining room table where we eat breakfast and watch TV. [...]

[...] There is, for example, a table in front of him. The table is real, it is physical. [...] Objects could be placed upon it; and yet, Doctor Instream, our entranced individual is not conscious of that table. [...] Now, consider: we will attempt to prove the existence of this material table to this individual who is not aware of it. How, therefore, could we prove to him that this table exists, when he is not aware of it in any manner whatsoever? [...] For him the table does not exist. [...]

If you have already suggested that the table does not exist for him, he will never see the table. The table will not seem to exist. The table will not exist in actuality for this subject in the trance state. [...] Nor will he recall or remember any meaning for him that that table might once have had.

Though objects upon the table be dearly familiar to him, in his trance state he will not recall them. Any sentiment involved with the objects on the table, such sentiment will disappear and have no meaning. [...]

[...] It would be highly difficult to ask a man while he dreamed to prove the physical reality of the bed in which he slept, or the bedside table which was at his head, or to prove the existence of the wooden floor upon which the bed rested. [...]

[...] The sight of the table struck my fancy, plus my view of the front doorway, with the green foliage showing through the open threshold. [...] Then I thought of asking Rob to take a snapshot of the table area, so that I could paint it later. [...]

[...] At the lunch table I had remarked that a particular correspondent of ours wanted “instant magic,” and my comment led to Rob writing some notes. [...]

[...] Rob and I took an hour’s nap, though, and ate supper at the coffee table while watching the evening news. [...]

[...] Bare legs propped up on the coffee table Rob sat, pen poised, and the session started.