“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“Now: Generally speaking, Ruburt enjoys our sessions, and considers them with a natural zest.

Through April and into May, I had problems controlling my own anger and hurt feelings toward Jane’s sinful self as I came to better understand its mechanisms of operation. Obviously. of course, my feelings reflected upon the workings of my sinful self, or upon some similar psychological quality—for how could I be so involved with my wife’s challenges, for almost 26 years, without complementing them within deep portions of my own personality? My anger, Seth told me, was just the way not to react, and even amid the welter of my emotions I had to agree. Jane had refused to listen to that self of hers in earlier years. “The idea is in no way to accuse the sinful self,” Seth said on April 28. “It is instead to understand it, its needs and motives, and to communicate the idea that it was sold a bad bill of goods in childhood—scared out of its wits, maligned…. Ruburt’s entire group of symptoms do not follow any established pattern. They are the result of applied stress, exaggerated finally by feelings of hopelessness, and by some relative feelings of isolation.” And I was so struck by his reference to Jane’s hopelessness that once more I returned to the private session for April 15. See Note 13, in which I quoted Seth’s material on her search for value fulfillment—how, without the psychic breakthrough of the sessions, “Ruburt would have felt unable to continue the particular brand of his existence.”

“Now Ruburt is undergoing some profound therapeutic changes. Probabilities at each point intersect with your time, and those probabilities are psychologically directed so that, in your terms once again, he is at an excellent intersection point, where the prognosis is excellent. Tell him I said this. And you are both responsible, for both of your lives merge in their fashions.”

In an experience last evening in the dream state, Ruburt received fresh evidence by viewing for himself portions of two other lives—merely snatches of environment, but so dearly filled with precious belongings and loved ones, so alive with immediacy-that he was shocked to realize that the full dimensions of existence could continue so completely in such detail and depth at the same time as his present life.

(9:25. With many pauses, but all intently:) Ruburt has had particular difficulty, however, with “the theory of reincarnation,”²² because as it is usually described, it seemed that people used it to blame as the source of current misfortune, or as an excuse for personal behavior whose nature they did not otherwise understand, and it has been so maligned. Its reality, however, serves to generate activity throughout time’s framework as you understand it, to unite the species, to reinforce structures of knowledge, to transmit information, and perhaps most of all to reinforce relationships involving love, brotherhood, and cooperation between generations of men and women that would otherwise be quite separate and apart from each other.

“Ruburt’s nightmare experience (three nights ago) is a beautiful example of the kind of explosive emotional content that many people carry, fairly hidden, representing certain taboos, translated of course in individualistic terms.

“Many people were dependent upon the church for their well-being, and in reincarnational terms many millions of people alive today were familiar then with such conditions. The nunneries and monasteries were long-term social and religious institutions, some extremely rigorous, while others were religiously oriented in name only. But there is a long history of the conflicts between creative thought, heresy, excommunication—or worse, death. All of those factors were involved in one way or another in the fabric of Ruburt’s nightmare material.

“The church was quite real to Ruburt as a child, through the priests who came (to the house) regularly, and through direct contact with the religious (grade) school, and the support offered to the (fatherless) family. Ruburt’s very early poetry offended Father (Boyle), who burned his books on the fall of Rome, so he had more than a hypothetical feeling about such issues. Many of his fears originated long before the sessions, of course, and before he realized that there was any alternative at all between, say, conventional religious beliefs and complete disbelief in any nature of divinity.

“Ruburt became afraid that if he went too far he would discover that he had catapulted himself into a realm where both questions and answers were meaningless. To do that is one thing, but to take others with you would be, he felt, unforgivable—and in the framework of those fears, as his work became better known he became even more cautious.

“Outside of that context, none of those fears make any sense at all. In a large regard the church through the centuries ruled through the use of fear far more than the use of love. It was precisely in the area of artistic expression that the inspirations might quickest leap through the applied dogmatic framework. The political nature of inspirational material of any kind was well understood by the church. Ruburt well knew even as a child that such religious structures had served their time, and his poetry provided a channel through which he could express his own views as he matured.

“Ruburt had considerable difficulty with church doctrine even then, and the rules of the order as actually practiced were later considered to hold their own seeds of heresy. As an old woman, Ruburt was forced to leave the order that he had initiated. He left with a few female companions who were also ostracized, and died finally of starvation. It was a time when unconventional patterns of thought, of unconventional expression, could have (fateful) consequences.

“The name Normandy comes to mind, and the name Abelard. The dream came to remind Ruburt of those connections, but also to remind him that his life even then was enriched by a long-held love relationship. The two corresponded frequently, met often, and in their ways conspired to alter many of the practices that were abhorrent yet held as proper church policy.

“The dream representing his grandfather symbolically allowed him to go back to the past in this life, to a time of severe shock—his grandfather’s death—which occurred when (Ruburt, at age 19) was beginning to substitute scientific belief for religious belief, wondering if his grandfather’s consciousness then fell back into a mindless state of being, into chaos, as science would certainly seem to suggest. In the dream his grandfather survives. His grandfather survived in a suit that was too large, which means that there was still room for him to grow. Ruburt had a small experience of hearing a voice speak in his mind (yesterday)—a voice of comfort, all he remembered of quite legitimate assistance he received from other personalities connected with the French life, that came as a result of the French dream.

“Ruburt found great comfort in the church as a young person, for if it created within its members the image of a sinful self, it also of course provided a steady system of treatment—a series of rituals that gave the individual some sense of hope the sinful self could be redeemed, as in the framework of most of Christianity, through adherence to certain segments of Christian dogma.

“When Ruburt left the church, the concept of the sinful self was still there, but the methods that earlier served to relieve its pressures were no longer effectively present. The concept was shifted over to the flawed self of scientific vintage. Science has no sacraments. Its only methods of dealing with such guilt involve standard psychoanalytic counseling—which itself deepens the dilemma, for counseling itself is based upon the idea that the inner self is a reservoir of savage impulses. Period.

“Ruburt’s creative nature early began to perceive at least that man’s existence contained other realities that were deeper. Some of this is difficult to separate. To leave the church, say, meant to carry still some of the old beliefs, but without the bandaids that earlier offered some protection.

“In that regard, Ruburt’s creativity kept struggling for its own growth and value fulfillment. His psychic recognition or initiation represented a remarkable breakthrough, meant to give him that additional psychic room that would insure the continued expansion of the abilities of the natural self. The sinful-self concept is a personal one for each who holds it, but it is also projected outward into the entire species, of course, until the whole world seems tainted.

“Ruburt’s creativity broke through to provide our sessions and to release the psychic abilities that had earlier been nearly but not completely repressed.

“His poetry acted in some regards as a stimulator. That breakthrough, you might say, with perhaps some exaggeration, was a lifesaver, for without some such expansion Ruburt would have felt unable to continue the particular brand of his existence. It is not possible to say in words what one person or another looks for in life, or what unique features best promote his or her growth and development. Even two plants of the same kind sometimes require completely different treatments. The sessions, then, opened the door to a particular kind of value fulfillment that was natural to Ruburt’s being. Now to some extent it was that poor, unhappy sinful self, a psychological structure formed by beliefs and feelings, that was also seeking its own redemption, since even it had outgrown the framework that so defined it.

“Ruburt broke through both psychically and creatively—that is, the sessions almost immediately provided him with new creative inspiration and expression, and with the expansions needed psychologically that would help fulfill his promise as a writer and as a mature personality. He was still left, however, with the beliefs in the sinful self, and carried within him many deep fears that told him that self-expression itself and spontaneity were highly dangerous.

For the first time ever since Jane began the sessions over 17 years ago, in December 1963, I got the chills when Seth delivered a passage—for when he remarked that without some such creative psychic expansion as the sessions “Ruburt would have felt unable to continue the particular brand of his existence,” I surely thought he meant that Jane could have chosen to die. I didn’t mention this to her after the session, and she seemed to have no such reaction when she read the typed session the next day. We did talk about a number of highly gifted people who had died at young ages; indeed, we’d often speculated about what further contributions such individuals could have made had they chosen to continue living physically. In ordinary terms, it’s easy to say that those early deaths were wasteful—but not, I said now, from the standpoints of those involved. Great variations in motivation, intent, and purpose must have been operating, but each person had done what he or she could do in this probable reality—then left it. Jane agreed that Seth had come through with excellent material. I told her I didn’t see how it could be any better.

And for me, at least, the reincarnational dimensions behind our present joint situation were heightened by a third association. It lay in the unpublished 874th session for August 22, 1979—the first one Jane held after having finished Mass Events a week earlier. I felt a distinct start of surprise when I came across this passage of Seth’s, for I’d completely forgotten it: “Jane, for example, entered the fetus when it was about three months old, and accepted this as a new life. You waited longer.” I didn’t remember Jane ever referring to that bit of information; certainly she’d never asked Seth to elaborate. I hadn’t either. (That was one of the few times when Seth had called her Jane instead of Ruburt, by the way.)

“Your love for each other is large enough to withstand any natural expression of aggression or resentment on either of your parts. As mentioned earlier, because of Ruburt’s background he feared abandonment often. It seemed to him that he did not offer what most men expected of women, so that if he wanted a good lifelong companion he had to tread lightly. He felt that many of his own characteristics were considered disadvantageous in a man-woman relationship.”

“The main issues with which the sinful self was concerned were focused most clearly in Mass Events and God of Jane,” Seth told us, “since more than the other books they represent a direct confrontation, ‘attacking’ the very legitimacy of the entire concept of sin and evil, insisting more dramatically on the good intent of man’s basic impulses…. [Ruburt’s] sinful-self explanation represents a fascinating psychological document in that regard, and also shows the self’s mobility and willingness to learn and change—once the intent is made to take a stand.

“It might be of value to have Ruburt mentally ask the sinful self for a few comments on how its beliefs about the female sex were connected with its concepts of sin, and if those attitudes are changing.”

“Now Ruburt had only one parent available most of the time, and he did not feel secure in that relationship—a situation chosen ahead of time, now. There is great leeway in the nature of such bondings…. With some people, they are so secure that they provide an overall, fairly permanent inner and outer framework. Ruburt’s relationship with his mother left much to be desired. The bonding did not secure him that vital sense of safety, and he felt threatened by abandonment. His bonding to the cultural beliefs of religion was very strong to make up for that initial lack. The sinful-self material represents those ideas that were a strong element in his original belief structures. The ‘troublesome’ material remained relatively inactive until his curiosity and ability led him to actively challenge those ideas while [he was] also in a situation where the natural fear of abandonment might be suggested. At certain points, the assimilation of new information is so qualifiedly different from the original belief structure that in order to assimilate it the personality is left for a time between belief systems.

“Now remember that Ruburt’s mother used phrases like: ‘I hereby disown you,’ and: ‘You are hereby disinherited,’ and: ‘I consider you no longer my daughter.’ Such situations increased Ruburt’s sense of not being safe, yet also reinforced feelings of independence, for he did not have to feel as dependent upon Marie as he might otherwise. The time would come, however, when the old bondings had to be encountered, for they simply could not hold the newer larger frameworks of understanding. The ideas of the so-called sinful self represent several layers of activity, then—troublesome aspects of belief structures that are shared by millions in your society, and by certain levels of Ruburt’s personality. He is now trying to assimilate a greater framework, to become bonded to a higher sequence of knowledge.