“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Early in September Tam mailed back to us, for our approval, the copy-edited 484-page manuscript for Mass Events. An independent reader had gone over our labors line by line, checking for everything from grammar and contradictions to philosophy, “flagging” questions for us by noting them on slips of pink paper taped to the appropriate manuscript pages. Along with our other projects—including answering a steady flow of letters—Jane and I spent the month going over Mass Events, accepting some suggestions but rejecting many others. On the 13th we received from Sue Watkins our first copy of Volume 1 of Conversations With Seth, Sue’s excellent account of the ESP classes Jane used to hold in one of the two apartments we rented in downtown Elmira, before we moved to the hill house outside of town in 1975. Sue was now working on the last two chapters of the second and last volume of Conversations. Early in October I returned Mass Events to our publisher once more; it was ready to be set in type. Jane kept at her poetry and essays right into that first week in October, while her physical improvements continued to show in a modest way. Her walking especially was better, and I was able to take her on an occasional drive in the beautiful country.

Such people—in a fashion, now—play a game of quite serious hide-and-seek with themselves and with the world. They believe in the dictum: “Divide and conquer.” It is as if, for reasons I hope to discuss, they refuse to put themselves together properly, refuse to form one fairly united self. The idea behind this is: “If you cannot find me, then I cannot be held accountable for my actions—actions which are bound in one way or another to betray me.”

He requires undue amounts of praise and attention from others, since he obviously will get little from himself. In a fashion, to an extent he will refuse to be accountable for his actions—therefore taking them out of the frame of judgment within which other people must operate. He then can avoid putting his “talents and superior abilities” to the test, where he feels he would certainly fail. He half realizes that the superior self and the debased self are both of psychological manufacture. His abilities are not really that grand. His failures are not nearly that disastrous. The belief in these highly contrasting elements of personality keep him in a state of turmoil, however, so that he feels powerless to act in any concerted fashion.

(Pause.) I will have more to say about such communications, and the ways in which they can point out the greater psychological mobility that is a more or less natural element in children. When you are a child, you are not held accountable for your actions in the same way that adults are, and schizophrenia often begins around puberty, or young adulthood, when people feel that their youthful promise is expected to bear fruit. If they have been considerably gifted, for example, they are now supposed to show the results of schooling through adult accomplishments. If they are nearly convinced, however, that the self is also dangerous or evil, then they become afraid of using their abilities, and indeed become more frightened of the self—which, again, they then try to conquer by dividing. They feel cut off from value fulfillment. In a fashion they begin to act opaquely in the world, showing a divided face.

“I think the fill-in sessions happen between book sessions, for a change of pace—where the material doesn’t have to fit a more concentrated overall book focus,” Jane added. She agreed to write a short account of what she’d just told me, for the record.)