“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

([Pat:]I had been terrified of my father for the first 19 years of my life. Indeed, I never saw my father as a person but rather as a dark shadow with a club. My father had a temper that was aimed at us children and at my mother. [Yet my father is a very loving person. I know that now. We are very close, now. I love my father deeply. He has mellowed in his attitude toward my youngest sister, also.] We got spanked when we misbehaved, which is something I’ve always been ashamed to admit to others. I didn’t want my friends to know my father spanked us. I wanted my family to be a happy one. I was always afraid to bring friends home for fear my mother and father might argue and embarrass me. Also, I didn’t think my dad wanted us to bring friends home.

Now this also overshadows your relationship with the males to whom you have come in contact. For you have been, on the one hand, terrified of them, and on the other hand wanted a normal relationship. Give me a moment here —on the one hand you desire more from a relationship with a man than you have any right to expect. No human being could ever deliver what you expect a man to deliver in a relationship. This is because you see the male in terms inspired in you when you were a child. You were terrified of the male, your father. On the other hand, you felt that he did contain wisdom, truth, almost godlike qualities. These qualities you attempt to project into the male that you meet. At the same time you are also terrified because of this background. No man can possibly be as godlike as your inner conception. Therefore, each man is bound to disappoint you. At the same time, you hope and pray subconsciously that the man will disappoint you because this male in your mind has godlike qualities that attract you; on the other, you see him as all powerful and as one who gives out punishment and one who is unreasoning and cruel because you felt that your father was cruel. You are afraid, so to speak, to come under a man’s thumb for this reason, to come under his domination. For to do so is to place yourself in a humble position and a frightening position underneath the male figure. Your terror as a child gave you an inner idea of reality and family group whereby you saw yourself completely powerless and helpless under the domination of this father figure. He was the source of all and yet he could at the same time take all away. And you felt, at the same time, that he would indeed do so. Because you were a male in past lives, you resented this all the more strongly. Give us a moment.

Now I will tell you the material that I have given you will help you and you should listen to it often. It should make one thing clear. Your Mr. Reed is not Mr. Reed’s Mr. Reed. You are not seeing the man as he is. You are seeing the image that you have projected upon him, and no one can live up to that image. I realize that when you discuss him that you say—I know he has failings. This is to assure yourself that, after all, the male is not so all powerful. But you do not see this man’s good points or failings clearly. Some of the qualities that you imagine in him as virtues are not and some of the qualities that you imagine to be failings are not failings. You will never have any relationship with the Dick Reed that you have projected upon a living human being. You may have a relationship with that human being, but there is a world of difference between that human being and the imagined image of him to which you react. And it is that image that you see when you look at him and when think of him. That imagined image is real in your mind, it is reality. But you cannot project that image upon another human being and deny him his own reality. You have no chance in a thousand lives of having a relationship with the man you think of as being Dick Reed, because you cannot have a two-way relationship with an image that is one-sided and has no flesh. Now give us a moment. While we are beginning a job, we may as well do a good one.

We have only dealt with one side of this relationship. Now this Mr. Reed has his own part to play. And his purposes and your purposes to this point have fit together beautifully, for neither of you have seen the other. He has seen his image of you. For his own reasons, he has not allowed himself to know an individual woman. And he does not want to know an individual woman physically—he does not want to. Give us a moment.

One point, you see, this artificial image that you have projected upon others has prevented you from knowing them, and in itself has prevented any legitimate relationship which might otherwise have occurred. As long as you allow this image to cover your eyes, you do not see the individual man and do not react to him for the image is between the two of you. Now you have frightened our young man. On the one hand he resents the image that you have placed upon him, and on the other hand it serves his vanity to accept it. He would much rather have you think of him as this image. He is hiding himself and you have very nicely given him an image to hide behind. You speak to each other in symbols and writing and poetry. You are using the symbols to escape normal human give and take. They are not symbols to aid in communication; they are symbols behind which you hide from communicating.

([Jane:] “Now see, he’s coming through much stronger than he used to, and it takes me longer to learn how to manage the transition. And I can’t remember hardly anything at all that he said this time, except that he was trying very hard to make his point clear. What did he say about Dick Reed, that’s what I want to know. I remember that. I knew that he was telling Pat something but I couldn’t eavesdrop.”

([Pat:] “Well, he read your book and he’s read the articles on Bishop Pike and his son. I know he doesn’t reject the ideas.”

([Pat:] “Yes, I know. And around school he plays the ‘cool guy’ role, the ‘love them and leave them’ image. Not in what he says but in his appearance. This is the image that others project on him and he allows the image to stay. The students accept this as being Dick. Most of the other women or men like to destroy the image or try to prove it wrong, but they do that out of resentment; they see Dick as a threat. Now showing that image and suddenly having Seth come along and say he doesn’t want physical relations with a female; this could be hard to accept. And yet out of all the people, we would be able to accept this and not see anything wrong.”

This desire to please your father, to attain perfection has also led you to seek knowledge. It has also given you the drive to develop. It has given you an innate, an intuitive feel toward inner reality. Now do not cry or sniffle. I am not your father giving you an arithmetic lesson. We do not have the time tonight to go into your father’s background which is highly interesting from several viewpoints and has something to do with his attitude toward his daughters. We do not have time to go into too much background on your Dick literature.

([Pat:] “Will Dick publish his poetry and can you give us more information about him?”)

Now. Will he publish his poetry or can he?

Give us a moment. Now, he is afraid of physical contact because he fears plunging wholeheartedly into physical existence and this is his way of holding off. He does not want to accept the ordinary responsibilities of adulthood and has not left his father’s home.

… He is afraid of any contacts that would … It seems here that there is a certain thing that he fears will happen to him if he involves himself in any relationship that would result in a family group. There is something here particularly with him… an intense loyalty from a past life having to do with his parents. There was a situation involving the three of them and he abandoned them in a way that he interpreted as a betrayal. The relationship between them then was different than it is now. He will not leave them now for he feels that he abandoned them in the past. In this past of which I speak there was a physical difficulty suffered after he abandoned them; and if he leaves them now, he is afraid that this physical difficulty will return. The main problem in his case stems from this particular immediate past life. We are trying to focus in on this.

(Long pause.) He was a woman. His present mother and father were both brothers…the American Revolutionary period, the same geographical area as now. His brothers were involved, it would seem, as spies. Your Mr. Reed as their sister told where they were and broke under pressure and fear. Concord… a cellar beneath an old inn… stone walls, floor partially dirt. Your Mr. Reed, then the sister, was hiding with the brothers here. She went outside for provisions. She was captured and gave the hiding place and could not then return to warn her brothers. She felt then that she had abandoned them and betrayed them. There was something done then to her right leg. A relative was responsible for an injury inflicted on her right leg connected with a horse.

([Pat:] “Will Dick publish his poetry? Then I changed it to CAN.”

([Pat:] “Yes, he’s got to have the drive on his own. This is fascinating for me.”

([Rob:] “It gives you an idea how things can operate on a subconscious level. He feels beholden to his parents. His psychic energy has chosen this way, possibly, of establishing karma. It’s not an idea of punishment, it’s an idea of further spiritual development. In this life he has chosen to be a son to these people, in a way to be of service to them, to help others.”

([Pat:] “Then he is fulfilling his blueprint by doing this.”

Now, ordinary adult responsibilities, you see, would take him away from these two individuals and so he has taken steps to see that he is not involved. Give us a moment. He is more bound to one of these persons than the other for one was a younger brother. He was extremely religious in his past life and the love of music connected with the church is reflected here. His name was strange, I am not too clear on this. The family name in the past: Achman. (Pat learned that Dick’s family has an Ackerman branch in June 1968.) The first portion like oxtagon.

He did voluntarily choose to be born as a son in this existence. Now he rationalizes on a conscious level his reasons for remaining home. You said earlier that around the school there was the expression he “loves them and leaves them”. You see, a very cruel interpretation and a very literal interpretation of his action in a past life, this coming through in an entirely different situation in this life. He is, of course, aware subconsciously of this and acts in such a way for he feels more honest. Through his actions in this life he is trying to make an honest statement about actions in the past. There is, of course, no punishment involved. His secrecy also is a direct result of these past existences, for once he spoke too much and betrayed too much, so now he remains secretive about matters that he considers important. The two brothers never did hold him responsible, however. They understood the situation. They knew that the girl had been terrified and spoke only out of fear and did not mean to betray them. In this life, then, the parents do not mean to hold him. They are not subconsciously trying to chain him; they are not subconsciously trying to bind him. He has chosen to act in this particular manner. He would be much freer if he’d realize that the brothers do not hold him responsible. And the betrayal, while a betrayal, was understandable, and that he spoke out of fear and did not intend to betray. If you will forgive me, I do not think we should use time in the session with your question about your friend’s poetry. It is not important in comparison to other information, nor is it important to the man’s development, nor to your own. Now I know that you speak of me highly; and if I wore a hat, I would tip it to you. You are helping other people and you will continue to do so. Now that you have some insight into the reasons for certain difficulties, you can begin to do something about them. Your problem is not with your Mr. Reed. Your problem is to rid yourself of the image that you have that you project upon him. You will not see him thoroughly until you do so; and in carrying this image with you, you see, you do not see the possibilities in many individuals whom you have already met. For you could not see through this image. When you read or listen to tonight’s session, you will see that I have given you some insight into your own overreactions. Now these cause the variation in your moods. You may ask me questions.

Frank Watts liked his cigars. Now you should be able to see. And you can tell Ruburt how directly you have seen that the difference in his attitude affects our sessions.