“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Why do we have jobs at a hospital, when Jane was so afraid of them while she was physical? I interpret our employment there, and her joyful mood, to mean that from where she is now she no longer fears hospitals and the medical establishment — that she’s moved beyond that deep apprehension she began to build up around the age of three, as her mother became gradually, and permanently, incapacitated with rheumatoid arthritis. I think that my own much more pleasant earlier experiences with the hospital in Sayre, including my doing free-lance art work for some of its doctors, helped me place the locale for this adventure there, rather than at the hospital in Elmira, where Jane died. In addition, we lived very happily in Sayre for several years following our marriage.

Considering Rob’s and my relationship — the challenges, joys, hopes, strains and our own personality characteristics. Maybe the whole thing is — reacting to ourselves individually and to the other person — experiencing our own personal reactions and then reacting to them — then reacting to the other person who experiences the same processes in himself. We … creatively keep altering ourselves and our mates. We can’t be ‘perfect’ at the start because the processes include changing events. There’s bound to be some lopsidedness to our growth, as we form psychological ‘art’ throughout our entire lives — or learn to live … artistically. Each person in such a relationship changes constantly in relationship to himself and the other person, until — hopefully? — by death you’ve used the characteristics of your own personality the best you can. Merged them with your mate’s so that between the two of you, you get a new creative mixture in a kind of psychological multiplication … You try different ways of using your own traits, etc.

Some seven and a half years later, Jane had been hospitalized for over ten months. We worked together during most of those days of treatment; by then, also, she had carried nearly to the limit her exploration of both her personal life and her “psychological ‘art’ “ of living. She very creatively considered those journeys and her new goals in the untitled poem that she spontaneously dictated to me from her hospital bed on March 1, 1984. It took her just seven minutes, spanning as it did two interruptions by nursing personnel,

I always enjoyed the lively art of conversation, said Seth’s mental voice to me.

“Uh, He says that he always enjoyed the lively art of conversation,” I said. [...]

[...] Often they remind me of other things I would like to say … I have never trusted the written word half as much as I trust the spoken word, and on your plane it is difficult to trust either, but as I mentioned, I always enjoyed conversation, which is the liveliest of the arts.

[...] I didn’t take this very seriously at first, but he also said that he knew an elderly woman who worked with me at the local art gallery where I had a part-time job. [...]

[...] By the time I returned from the art gallery on those winter afternoons, it was already dark. [...]

While writing out this statement, I’m reminded that I experienced a milder version of the same sensation last month, while I was working at my part-time job in the art department of a local greeting card company. I was alone in the art room, eating lunch at my desk, when the feeling swept over me. [...]

[...] Like many others, you feared the inner world so strongly, even though you were somewhat acquainted with it through your art, that nothing but panic would force you to try that invisible knob. [...]

Seth went on to explain that the more camouflage (physical dimensions) an art object had, the less its validity to the inner senses.

A few days after the last session, I sat in my small office at the art gallery, looking out at the landscaped yard. [...]

[...] (We’d obtained both kittens from the janitor at the art gallery. [...]

[...] … There are many times that our paths have crossed, and that is why I wanted you here and why you happened onto the art gallery where Ruburt is employed. [...]