“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The reactions are beautiful examples. First of all Ruburt was worried, somewhat, concerning your own reactions when you found that you now had a new engagement for Friday evening, after already planning to cancel a previous one, in order to have some free time for yourself, and he felt to blame since he had already made a commitment to Mark—rather unwillingly, by the way. But it will harm him in no way to help Mark in his endeavor.

This is highly amusing, for he did not want to have a chair available for the owner of the second gallery. He did not want him in the house. However he felt quite guilty over this, for the man is a Negro, and he feared that his dislike would be taken as discrimination. To prove to himself that this indeed was not the case, he began a nervous, frenzied and altogether desperate attempt to make certain that enough chairs were available.

He was very fond as a child of Edward Briscoe, who was also Negro. Edward was poor and the victim of circumstances. He helped out in Ruburt’s household, therefore Ruburt feels that he should be extremely pleasant and helpful to any Negro, for this other boy’s sake. And so he felt extremely guilty because he did not welcome the thought of this other Negro into his house.

(Jane’s childhood friend, Eddie, died of diabetes in his early thirties.)

He was quite correct in assuming as he did that his upset had little to do with a lack of chairs, since he knew perfectly well that a sufficiency was available. Now, for another piece to our puzzle. The mayor is also to be present upon this occasion, and Ruburt thought subconsciously how pleased her friend, Edward Briscoe, would be in his simple way—in the old days—to be present, and how impressed he would be with the mayor.

I decided to mention this since he is at the point now—I am speaking of Ruburt—when he will not accept the superficial reasons given by the ego for many reactions, but seeks to discover deeper causes. There was also some other problem here, in that Ruburt feels, as you do, and quite rightly, that Mark is in over his head, psychologically speaking.

(See the tracing on page 219. Seth goes over much of tonight’s test data, but in order to avoid mixing my notes with his I’ll give the usual interpretations Jane and I made first.

(“A connection with another car, not your own.” When I visited Dr. Colucci on January 11 he told me that about a week previously, probably on Sunday, January 2,1966, he had been unable to make the climb up the icy road leading to his home outside Elmira. Dr. Colucci lives on top of a long steep hill, yet this was the first time in three years, he said, that he had been unable to drive home. Jane said Seth gave this bit of test data because we ourselves had had trouble making a nearby steep hill in our own car, also this month. Seth dealt with our own car troubles in the 222nd session. Jane said she thought the association between these two episodes was legitimate.

(“A long narrow road.” We thought there could be association here also in the manner of the previous data about a connection with another car, not our own. Dr. Colucci, as stated, lives atop a hill climbed by a long narrow road. So do the Gallaghers, in the same general area. Dr. Colucci had trouble climbing the road to his home, and we had trouble climbing the road to the Gallagher home.

(Jane and I think this a most interesting bit of information. We also compare it with the number 12 data, wherein the numerals in the dentist’s address became scrambled with the idea of people in his waiting room. Only now, it appears, is Seth beginning to get this specific in his interpretation of test data.)

Madison Avenue simply means New York City to Ruburt, and was connected to his Fell associations, which were wrong.