“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now it was on the one hand feigned behavior, but the symptoms had to be bothersome enough or they would not have served their purpose. To some extent verbal communication was also minimized. Your “condition” effectively kept Ruburt from making any demands, or from putting any verbal pressure upon you, for he rushed of course to your support.

The symptoms were also meant to frighten Ruburt, to shock him, to shake him up, and then hopefully do him some good, as he saw how it was to have someone around all the time who did not feel very well.

For other material, now: again, some of this will sound simple and apparent. He has a rich emotional nature, and he responds emotionally. Programs, his weekly programs for example, are often a benefit to him, if they are not too extensive, because they give him a short-range challenge which he enjoys.

His attempt to have you encourage him up and down and running, is a not-too-well disguised attempt for further emotional involvement on your part. He would be as upset as you over a smothering closeness. However often he simply feels lonely—not necessarily for your physical presence, for you are often in the house, but for emotional recognition that you are apt to forget about.

(I had a brief coughing spell here, which of course hurt the side. This happened a few times during the first part of the session—usually at key bits of material. Finally Seth let me know in a good loud voice, that he hoped I noted the spots at which I coughed. I said I was aware of the connection, etc.)

Once someone gets through your surface restrictive tendencies, obvious ones, then your spontaneity flows to the surface. Once someone gets through Ruburt’s open spontaneous characteristics they are apt to wonder what happened, because he will often not let them get any further. (A very acute pair of points.) Hence the fact that his students remain students as a rule, and not personal friends. As you know, those who get through all the way find a bedrock loyalty. But the spontaneous emotional character warms up, brightens, and refreshes what can be a morose inner self at times. Therefore your emotional response to him is important for that reason.

You have not been able to ignore him since he had his symptoms. You might be angry at him, in which case there was a definite emotional response, or disgusted; he thought in the past, the dim past, disgusted enough to leave him—but you could not ignore him.

I am giving you some good information. Whether you wanted to or not, he felt that you had.

Now. Give us some time on this, and remember we have not given that particular material in that way before. (True.) He felt that you ignored him when you became ill—that you were growing so morose that you felt life meaningless. Then the sessions came (in 1963), and he felt they had saved you both.

They also served to see to it that the two of you spent more time together. Then he felt that all he meant to you was contained in the sessions, that as a woman and a wife you found him far less fascinating. Other background information you have been given, and this is background for what is coming.

It was during your illness that he began to watch your face for a hint of your mood and feelings—a tendency he has relinquished only lately. The physical signs of improvement have been most beneficial to him, forcing him to recognize that betterment is not only possible but has occurred.

The knees seemed all the more obvious by contrast, and to some extent then he focused upon them. He sees the two of you together, doing your own thing, but emotionally in rich interaction. This is what he wants.

He has mixed feelings about you and his book. On the one hand he would like you to read it as he goes along, and at times he envisions enthusiastic discussions about it. He thinks you have emotionally closed off from it since you never ask him about it. On the other hand he fears your disapproval and criticism, and thinks you will look for flaws, and so he lets matters stand there.

The knees are a symbol of the problems of course still remaining. He enjoyed your massaging them, but he did not want to ask you to do so, for he saw it as a sign of emotional giving on your part that must be spontaneous, and not asked for or demanded.

Now give us a moment. It seemed to him lately that you did not want to dance when he felt at his best, and you wanted him to when he felt less well. Both of you have been making adjustments since our last two sessions, and in a way Ruburt’s knees represented the same kind of problem as your symptoms—matters brought to the head, and yet not acted upon.

Now. Several other points that we will elaborate on later. In his books he is facing challenges he did not face earlier. Before, a book was a novel. He wrote it through, and that was the end of it. It was all intuitive, emotional and fictional. He did not need to deal with details, the same kind of organization and overall planning.

A draft took him little time. The nonfiction involves him in projects that are of longer duration, and he is handling them very well. He was used to more frequent creative challenges, lesser ones in a way, rather than long-term projects, and he was not capable in the past of the planning for example that is now a part of his creative endeavors.

As a result however he does feel the lack of more frequent, fresh, completely different inspirational material. This can be satisfied through the poetry. Short-term challenges of any kind that are at all practical are excellent to break up for him the longer-term purpose of his book.

The morning situation can be handled from any of numerous standpoints, but they should be emotional standpoints. He can imagine himself up ahead of you, as he thought of, surprising you with your breakfast already prepared. That is one solution. It would help if you kissed him in the morning, and made some emotional supportive gesture that also encouraged him to get up.

A concerted effort should be made, either to have him face the issue and solve it, or to avoid it completely. He thought of getting up at four again. What he does is not nearly as important, obviously, as his feelings toward it—and he has highly negative feelings that cause him symptoms when he does not get up and believes he should. I will cover this much more thoroughly however.

At the risk of being repetitive: if he concentrates upon his work, the morning issue will take care of itself, and by work I mean not only his writing, but his own individual psychic endeavors. He measures what he does daily against what you do daily, and feels automatically guilty if you do more than he, or even if he is doing watercolors while you are typing a session.

He still feels guilty about you going to work in the morning, and not getting up just rubs his nose in it further. He is saying “I may not have to go out to work like you do, but I am punishing myself for it, so do not blame me.”

(“Yes....” There followed a short exchange between Seth and me, after he asked if I had any questions. I mentioned the one I’d come up with the other day: what other names has he had in various lives? A list of the names would be interesting, I thought. Seth agreed. He now suggested I ask the question again later, saying the list would run several pages long. He then wished us goodnight in his usual manner, at 10:50.

—and then on weekends, when you do not have to go to work, he feels bad when you have to see him.

If he were in good condition on weekends, he would have to ask himself then why he was not good during the week. The self-deception, you see, could not be so easily maintained.

—since he is punishing himself during the week because you have to go to work. (Emphatic.

(“I wish he wouldn’t.”