“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

As he is learning it is, however, often up to him to interpret the images that I send him. The psychological bridge can transmit, you see, and to some extent translate, but not interpret.

This psychological gestalt is a connector. I am dependent in a large measure upon Ruburt’s own knowledge, and lack of it, in that I cannot force for example from him, from his speech mechanism, concepts with which he is entirely unfamiliar. I must introduce them step by step.

I could not have explained moment points to you, for example, until I had clearly given the idea of the spacious present. It is not as simple a thing as it might seem, for there is no coercion involved, Ruburt always consenting to let me push concepts at him, which he interprets speech-wise with my assistance.

Often I give him an internal image, or experience, of a whole concept, but unless it could be vocalized it would have no meaning except to him.

Ruburt is of course much more familiar with sense impressions than he is with internal data, or with impressions that do not come to him through the physical senses. Therefore in our experiments, often, I will give him an impression, and he will automatically translate it into visual terms, although his eyes are closed. And then he is tempted to interpret it literally, as he would an ordinary visual image.

For simplicity’s sake, I say that I gave him the image, but actually I gave him the impression, which he translated into an image, so that he could deal with it in a more familiar way.

As a result in such instances, it is up to him to interpret the image correctly. The words that you hear are my words and not Ruburt’s. However, they are representations of my thought, as they are sifted through various layers, first of all of our composite psychological framework, and then through layers of Ruburt’s own personality.

There is often at his end a final tug and pull, so that the vocal mechanism will finally speak the correct interpretation. Of course Ruburt’s own associations are used by me, with his consent, up to a certain point, to enable me to lead him to the proper subject or image.

Then when we are successful there is a divergence from his associations so that he says the correct word, even though the correct word, for him personally, would be the wrong word as far as his personal associations are concerned.

Here is a very brief example. Suppose I am trying to give him the impression of a glass of water. It is fairly easy to insert the idea of water, but this may lead him personally to think of the Gulf of Mexico, or the ocean off of Marathon, or even of the Atlantic at York Beach. I will use his associations until I am certain that he has the concept of the word water, but precisely where he is about to say the ocean for example, and after having made use of his associations to get him to this point, I must suddenly make him say a glass of water.