“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(After break, to Bette.) Now for a cousin of Richelieu in the 18th-century France you put up some struggle pretending that you do not understand what you like to think of as intellectual discussions, and you make a great fight against what you like to think of as verbalization, and you pretend to yourself that you do not understand what I am saying when I am saying it. Now you are putting artificial limitations upon yourself that you partially understand and partially do not understand.

Those who need verbal messages most, and I am closing my eyes so no one will be offended, those of you who need verbal messages most, are those who have the greatest doubts about their own inner reality and experiences, (to Bette) but beyond that you distrust anyone who seems to have had a better education in this life than your own, and it is discrimination.

Now you have a division neatly drawn for yourself; a framework in which you find yourself acting. A personality that you have set up for yourself, but the fact that you are coming to classes and using the intuitional abilities opens up a slight window in that artificial personality that you have adapted, for in your mind you think—  and if you will forgive me, I will speak for you, but you may make a rebuttal. You think: “I am frank, I am earthy, I am one of the common stock; I do not understand this high verbalized chatter. Those that have been to school understand these things, but I am left out. But I do not care for the words are meaningless and in me there is a frankness and vitality that these others do not have.”

Now that is one level, and on another level you think, “I am of the earth and strong and vital, and those who rely upon such thin, high, intellectual matter do not know what they are talking about. I can be brutal in my honesty but at least I am honest and I do not play with words.” And this is a personality that you have set up for yourself because behind it all in the French court you glorified in the use of words, in the high play of intellect in what now to you would seem to be surface, artificial qualities of stereotyped verbal behavior. You are quite able to follow any discussion in this room and it is about time that you realized it and used those intellectual abilities that are your own, and it is about time that you stopped telling yourself that you do not understand that which you well understand. I am onto you.

A dandy was a gentleman with high and fine and fancy white fluffed collars in the latest fashion, who wore girdles and bound in his waist, who was flirtatious and usually quite artificial in behavior, who dealt above all things in ritualized verbal activities, who got where he could get anyway he could.