“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Saturday and Sunday, September 19 and 20, Jane and I spent visiting my brother William Richard and his wife Ida, in Rochester, NY. Bill has been acting as custodian of the second carbon of the Seth material. Jane and I have always made it a policy to have a carbon of any written material—prose, poetry, etc., in separate hands outside of our house, as a protection against loss by accident, fire, etc.

The other man was not involved with any of you in past lives, nor do I see him indeed at all in England in any era. Instead the Mediterranean area in the 1500’s, and it is from this period that his present speech impediment indeed originated.

There was an army from another country, an invasion. A man in his company was thought to be disloyal. This man—

—was thought to be the disloyal member. He denied it; but when they decided that another innocent man was the culprit, a man whom he knew to be innocent, then to save his own life he let them think the innocent man was the betrayer.

He has paid time and time again for this. No one asked that you pay. He was then, even then, conscientious, and therefore fourfold bothered more than most by his own betrayal. In his immediately past life he plagued himself through a useless arm; right arm, you see, so he could not point out again. This time the self-adopted defect is less, a mere annoyance.

But such a mere annoyance becomes indeed a form of torture. There is no longer any need for this. In other ways, through constructive action, he has more than made his way.

(Break at 10:32. Jane was fully dissociated. She had been worried about giving a session before three witnesses, she said, this being the first time for that many. During the conversation at break it developed that Louie in this life does not use his right hand for all things, but is somewhat ambidextrous. Ida associated this, which neither Jane or I realized, with the fact that in the previous life a right arm had not been used by Louie.

It is indeed a basic anxiety and fear. The personality can express himself very well. In the 1500’s he was eloquent, and it is precisely because this eloquence, so persuasive, so smooth-tongued, caused his superiors at that time to believe the accusations against the innocent man, that he now fears to use an eloquence, because he once let it run away with him.

It is the present personality’s desire to express himself, opposed by the subconscious memories of that past life, with its fear of the effects of eloquence used without discretion, that now cause his difficulty.

His present desire for expression will certainly not change. It is therefore the fear of expression that must be erased. Nor can this erasure occur without the realization by this personality that he can indeed trust himself. For both the fear and the anxiety is based simply upon a resulting distrust of his ability to handle eloquence or verbal expression.

Since I will not give a session simply to give a session, and because I will not let Ruburt parade me as part of his precious subconscious, I will indeed here speak for myself, but in terms that will help another and for the benefit of that other. And despite our anxious Ruburt’s furious attempts to block me, I will indeed say that the person who was once betrayed by the personality involved was the present father of the personality, and he knows it—

So, as the father pays back his old betrayer, he hurts the son without knowing why. He cannot understand his own cruelty toward him, or the acts which he is impelled to perform. Nor can the son, loving the father, understand either the father’s cruelty or his own sense of gratification received from the cruelties. He, with his remorseless conscience, welcomes the cruelties, for they make him feel as if he is doing penance, and for what?

For an offense that has been paid for in full. And each cruelty committed by the father hurts the father more, for he is bewildered by the unkindness of his own actions toward the son, toward whom his conscious feelings are indeed fraternal. And again—

(I believe this passage refers to the fact that Louie had returned to Rochester from California a few months ago. At the moment Louie is living with his parents, not being married, and is working in his father’s place of business. Louie had also remarked that his speech impediment had not bothered him as much while he lived in California, as it does currently.)

The time, 3 PM. He went out to the kitchen, where the ball after he played with it finally rolled. A portion of a stove had been left on; and though there was no danger of fire, the child was afraid of fire. But this was not the cause of his sudden terror.

The fact remains that the child did try to scream. At the same time a door close by slammed abruptly. Unused to being alone, the child reacted in the first place vehemently to the unaccustomed isolation. He ran to the stove, touched it, and as he burned but only slightly his right hand, the door slammed nearby very loudly.

This time when the child tried to scream he could not. The sound of the door was associated with the burn in his mind. When in a few moments his mother returned he tried to explain why he cried, for she had heard the first cries, and he stuttered.

There is a subconscious domination of father over son, always an implied, always an insidious circle of reaction leading to reaction. It is not strictly necessary that the personality here involved change his environment drastically, if he can understand the circumstances that underlay the relationship between himself and the father.

Communication is a field in which the personality will be extremely successful, for through electronics there is communication, and he can use his latent eloquence which now has no outlet, in this field. And may I here add that his interest in psychic phenomena is precisely caused by this need to communicate.

His actual predicament is one where what he wishes, he feels will hurt others. And yet through living at home while helping the father, on the one hand, in the establishment, at the same time on unconscious levels by his very presence he says “I am not doing what I want to do, and you are to blame.”