“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Give us a moment here. (Pause.) To some extent the symptoms did represent caution. He did not want to move until he was sure of his direction once more. It was the stubborn ego in this case that prevented him from seeing clearly the direction which had been given by other portions of the self.

Previous ego patterns can still operate under various circumstances. Ruburt was often a male, and he sometimes attempts to manhandle the feminine aspects of his present personality, to inflict upon it literally qualities that go against its grain. Force, logic over intuition, for example, or intellect over psychic awareness. The psychic abilities in his case are, among other things, aided by that balance of characteristics, and these should not be tampered with.

You see, for years Ruburt hid himself from his mother, and as stated earlier he felt that in giving her his book he had opened himself to her. For years he would not wear anything that had been close to her. Then he shoved this feeling away and would not face it.

Egotistically he forced other aspects of his personality to accept what they feared. In times of high vitality the effects were minor. After the book’s publication however the effects multiplied. A message to this effect was given him in a dream, and he ignored it.

You see however he felt that he was learning maturity by ignoring the subconscious. This is at the base of these problems. He mistrusted the most reliable portion of his present personality. He automatically rejected the sweaters as giving warmth on a subconscious basis.

Even then, however, the subconscious would not be forced too far, and a good deal of the time the sweaters sat in his drawer. They were not his style, they were his mother’s style and in wearing them he felt further alarm that he was being cast in her world, so to speak.

Only the last one was simple. His letters of thanks protested too much. He wore the sweater night and day in a frenzied attempt to prove that it I had no harmful effects upon him. From the subconscious standpoint this was simply too much.

At various times when working he went without a bra because his shoulders bothered him, and he wore one of his mother’s sweaters. Now his mother never wore a bra, you see. The thin shoulders he imagines he has are a part of mother identification.

(“Connection with an old car.” Jane feels this refers to a young man, Tom, who works at the Art Shop where I bought the canvas which furnished the object. Jane often runs errands there for me, and Tom, a framemaker, often waits on her. Tom has an old sports car, and not long after I had bought the canvas, he described the car to Jane on one of her visits there, detailing his troubles with it, etc.

(This is a stronger connection than it would seem, for Tom is a friend of ours who visits us fairly often. He also paints himself. Other references to Tom crop up in the data also.

(“A window, or indication of an open viewpoint, or station from which activities may be viewed. A high window or exalted viewpoint.” This is excellent data, and refers again to the second-story workroom above the Art Shop. From this room a large plate glass window looks down on West Water Street, and Tom is in the habit of watching the busy activities on the main street below. He has often waved to Jane and me as we walked past. Jane always waves to him whenever she walks down Water Street, which is at least three times a week.

(“A gasoline connection.” Possibly another reference to Tom’s story about his car. Cars and Tom are rather closely connected. Since his first tale to Jane we have heard subsequent stories about his car, the most recent being how he stripped several gears.

(“and connection with an erratic behavior. Perhaps with a key also.” These may refer, again, to Tom’s episode with his car, when he stripped gears, etc. We cannot be sure without Seth’s help, but this data does fit the events of that evening as described to us by Tom himself and others.

There were many more instances, in terms of physical symptoms, which have now vanished, and so he is progressing.