“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Ruburt (Jane) today received a letter from a man who would certainly be labeled a schizophrenic. Ruburt was distressed—not only by the individual’s situation, but by the philosophic implications. Why on earth, he thought, should someone form such a reality?

Now on the question of “mental disorders,” it is highly important that individual integrity be stressed, rather than the blanket definitions that are usually accorded to any group of symptoms. In many such circumstances, however, such individuals are combining the imagination and the reasoning abilities in ways that are not in keeping with their historic periods. (With some irony:) It would not be entirely out of keeping, though somewhat exaggerated a statement, to claim that men who stockpile nuclear weapons in order to preserve peace are insane. In your society, such activities are, in a way that completely escapes me, somehow under the label of humanitarianism!

(9:23.) In the case of the man who wrote Ruburt, we have a mixture of those characteristics in which interior events—the events of the imagination—cast too strong a light upon physical events as far as the socially accepted blend is concerned. Again, I am not speaking about all cases of mental disorder here. I do, however, want to make the point that your prized psychological norm as a species means that you must also be allowed a great leeway in the use of the imagination and the intellect. Otherwise, you could become locked into a rigid conscious stance, one in which both the imagination and the intellect could advance no further. It is vitally important that you realize the great psychological diversity that is present within your psychological behavior—and those varieties of psychological experience are necessary. They give you vital psychological feedback, and they exercise the reaches of your abilities in ways that are overall most advantageous.

The man who wrote wants to live largely in his own world. He hurts no one. He supports himself a good deal of the time. His view of reality is eccentric from most viewpoints. He adds a flavor to the world that would be missing otherwise, and through his very eccentricity, to some extent he shows other people that their rigid views of reality may indeed have chinks in them here and there.