“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Even with Ruburt’s difficulties as a personality he now makes more use, though he does not realize it, of his creative energies than he ever did. To a large extent you realize this, and it makes you more anxious for your own work and endeavors.

Now you are concerned with our material and so is Ruburt. But there is also a strongly personal interrelationship between the three of us, and this is also important. If you, Joseph, have any questions feel free to ask them. Remember that the emotional element is behind all of our sessions. Without it there would be no sessions and I would not be here.

Now you are dealing with emotions, working with your portraits. Some of the people you paint are real, but you do not know them. You work within regular hours, yet within those hours you are dealing with unregularized emotions. You are dealing with personalities, some far different than your own, and forming these into paintings.

As you know both the discipline and the spontaneity are necessary. Now I know you. I know you far better than Ruburt knows you. (Smile.) Some things you block out. The personalities behind the people that you paint now run about that room of yours, and you try to put them into your paintings, and to make yourself strong enough to contain their reality, and you feel that Ruburt does not understand this. You do not understand all of it, but you feel the pressure of their reality, that wants to be expressed.

Now our sessions take little time. If they took twice the time you would still be very well off for what you get out of them. The recording of them does take time, and over this I personally have no control. There is a possibility that Ruburt could get help from his students here to relieve you, but I do not believe that you would want anyone at our regular sessions. The typing does take time from your own work.

(This is the case here: Jane and I had discussed this problem of time before the session. Usually I have little trouble fitting the typing into our daily routine. It is true that we would sorely miss the sessions; much that is useful to us personally would be gone, even if this were the only reason we held them.

I am far more interested in personality equations than in mathematical ones. I have said what I intended to say this evening. Now you may ask me questions or end the session, or I will begin some other material. Or you may take a break and think of questions, or just take as rest as you prefer.

(“Do some of those personalities know they are being painted?”

You picked him up, so to speak, because of the personal association. He wanted to be an artist also. He has violent tendencies that he does not understand, usually well-hidden. The chin is a subterfuge, for it appears weak.

Two small paintings on your shelf. They are both of the same man. One is more a profile than the other. Ruburt knows. He has noticed them and disliked them. He disliked the person.

There is great struggle within the personality however, shown in the sketches—an infantile nature that yet has abilities and struggles to use them. The man reminds Ruburt personality-wise of your mother, hence his dislike of seeing the characteristics so similar in the male and younger portrait.

(Naturally I found all this quite interesting. I was aware of none of it while making the two small oil sketches in September 1968. I now knew which two Seth referred to; strangely enough, I hadn’t thought of them as being of the same personality at all. I don’t think they bear any striking resemblance to each other, though in a general way they could be of the same type of person. After the session Jane told me that she knew at once, after I had finished them, that they were of the same person; she took it for granted that I knew this also.

This is also another reason why you “picked out” in quotes this personality, through association. Give me a moment. I am not sure what I am after here. A change in your father’s condition, in that the steadiness of his condition is not as you suppose. (Pause.)

The sexes will be reversed and your mother will make a fine husband. Your father has been twice a male, successively. He will adopt the female role, which is more natural to his personality, and be more at ease with creative functions at the spontaneous level. Your mother has been a female now twice in a row, and is ill at ease, and will do much better as a male. The mother-love experience has done much however to balance a too-aggressive nature.

Far be it from me to give either Ruburt or yourself swelled heads, but in your cases we see the male and female aspects well-balanced, one of the reasons why this is your last incarnation. These elements are highly unstable and each personality works them out.

Now. Understand that the main power of your father’s personality is already somewhere else (pause), and is simply waiting for this errant portion.

A portion therefore of your father’s present personality fragment understands this. Now Ruburt has lately allowed his abilities more freedom and as in any endeavor he will make errors, and he must expect them.