“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(On Friday at 1 PM on February 5, my father died. The funeral was on Monday, February 8 in Tunkhannock, PA. Jane and I were of course with Betts and Loren, my mother, and various other friends and relatives in Tunkhannock over the weekend. Jane’s condition was not good and I became very concerned.

(We returned home on Monday after a heavy snowstorm in Pennsylvania, and I did not return to work until Thursday. This session is prefaced with my notes of two pendulum sessions I held with myself. The first on Tuesday, February 9 concerns my shaky hand and my father. The second on the morning of Wednesday, February 10 concerns Jane’s condition and my part in it, etc. It was very productive. Suffice it to say here that Jane’s own pendulum agreed with it in toto, and we spent a good deal of time discussing it. By suppertime Jane was getting some strong emotional reactions to parts of it. [Loren, incidentally, is my younger brother.]

(Monday’s session, which was not held, is scheduled instead for Thursday, February 11.

(Tonight’s session was held in the studio.)

Your pendulum data was indeed correct. Also the remark Ruburt made just before the session: he does blame your mother for your illness of several years back, and also for his own.

(This we did not know.) It was at the time of your illness that he began to conceal his feelings from you, and in a sense to coddle you. His overanxious behavior, its roots, have been given in other sessions. You follow me here.

He tried to use suggestion as a bandage. As I mentioned at one time, he literally felt divorced from you emotionally, because he was divorced from the emotional nature of his own being.

He has great energy, and was able to withstand this self-assault for some time before actual physical symptoms showed. Even then his physical system has been amazingly resilient.

For some time, subjectively, he was in a highly ambiguous position. He felt he could expect no comfort from you, that he must face both your fears and his alone. Superstitiously he felt that in hiding fears about your parents he hid them for you both—shoved them under the psychological rug; but the rug became heavier and heavier.

This began at the gallery when your father and mother first stated that money would be needed, and very shortly after your return from Florida. Ruburt was outraged that having treated you the way they had, they would so humiliate themselves as to beg for your aid, and instead decided that basically they did not feel humiliated but were asking what they considered their just due.

When you were ill and not working part of Ruburt’s money went to them, and he was ashamed at resenting this, and furious at you that you would allow them to do this to him. He was sure that if the circumstances were reversed he would never bleed you to help his parents.

Now we are dealing with his attitudes and feelings. I am leaving my comments out here, you understand. He wanted a car when you did not have one, but was furious that you got one in order to visit your parents—not to escape from them.

The neighborhood squabbles there remind him of Middle Avenue. He feels as if his mother is getting your mother to do her dirty work for her, and when your mother said to him “You are a phony,” it was also his own mother for the thousandth time putting him down.

He feels trapped in this apartment, that he is here because he is readily accessible to help your mother, as when he was a child he was readily accessible to help his own mother. He has a strong, affectionate, open nature that was dealt some harm. (Long pause at 9:18.)

Now give us time…. He felt that any success of his that was not matched by you pulled you down in your parents’ eyes, and was therefore part victory and part defeat. He did fear that you would become bitter if you did not succeed (as a painter), and he sometimes felt that you retreated to the studio away from him, as purposely your father retreated from your mother into the cellar or garage. He would rather have burned anything that you have rather than store it in your family’s house. Symbolically this threatened him. He mentioned it on several occasions, but you made a reasonable reply having to do with convenience, and so he brooded.

When you were quiet at times, this reminded him of your father’s uncommunicative manner, and frightened him. If he reacted emotionally, this frightened him, because he was afraid you would interpret it as your mother’s reaction. He is furious that he is in such poor physical condition in front of her. He thinks that you were taken in by her for years. These sound like rather harmless attitudes, or normal enough.

(“They don’t to me.” I knew this was loaded material, etc.)

Now. Since your reaction when Rebellers was published, he feared that you would grow to hate him for any success, if you did not succeed, since his success he felt was largely at your expense—you bought him the time in which to work.

If he succeeded he might lose your love, in other words. He closely watched your reaction after that. On a few occasions he found it negative early in the game, but any criticism later of his relationship with publishers was taken to be a symbol of an anger with him because of his books, period.

He was also from the beginning afraid of the time it took you away from your work to record them, and felt that you must resent this. If he thought you looked tired, or at all reproachful or worried or bothered on a session night, he would feel that you did not really want to have a session. But he would cover this up, and if you were not out there with your notebook, he took this as a sign that you really did not want a session. (Long pause.)

At the same time he projected his fears upon you, thinking that you loved him only because he was a writer. Then why were you not pleased with his success, you see?

(9:50. I was appalled, and I suppose that from my own actions Jane was too. For the moment at least I felt terribly discouraged. While Jane left the room for a brief time, I asked my pendulum a question, and received this answer: “I don’t think Jane wants to get well.” The question had occurred to me during last night, I believe, but I had forgotten it until now.

When Rebellers was published he felt (underlined) that you were coldly angry at him. This after the series of events mentioned earlier. He has been slowing down to give you time to catch up.

(At the time Rebellers was published, I was jealous, but it took me some time to learn this. I made the breakthrough finally with a series of questions directed to my pendulum, as I had done this morning concerning Jane’s knee troubles. In fact, it was the memory of the success of that episode that led me to this morning’s session.)

Clear emotional communication on your part will be most valuable here. On several occasions on your tour there was a name confusion, and this upset him for fear you would be hurt and put down. Do you follow me?

(“Yes.” Here Seth refers to my being called Mr. Roberts on occasion during the tour. Part of this was caused by an error on the jacket copy of The Seth Material. I can say that this bothered me not at all.)

The fact that you did not discuss plans together helped prolong his distorted ideas, you see. There was little counterbalance, and this is being remedied.

(10:16. I was really upset by this time in the session. There were so many things I wanted to say that I believe I ended up silent because points got in each other’s way, etc. I did voice some thoughts that I’ve mentioned before: about why, in times of great stress when it’s obvious the organism is in trouble, it doesn’t intuitively override wrong thinking and set itself right so that it can go on about the business of life, etc. Resume at 10:28.)

Now your own feelings toward success are highly ambiguous, and in the past neither of you really discussed them, so there was fertile ground for Ruburt to exaggerate some of your ideas and feelings.

It is indeed. Now many of your own attitudes have changed by now, but initially he used some of your past attitudes as a basis, not realizing that you had changed them. There was some fact then. However he exaggerated it—but the facts have changed.

He was not aware that your attitude had changed as much as it has.

He was not emotionally aware of this. The fear projections, repressed, telepathically attract like projections, and inhibit other ones. He had tuned himself toward fears, and these are what he picked up most frequently. You did not until recently make a practice of communicating feelings to each other on any consistent basis. This alone makes your changed attitudes clear. He does need encouragement now. The remark “You are doing this to yourself” is interpreted by him as an accusation. The more pliant bodily response in your intimate affairs shows that he is trusting you again as he had not done for some time to that degree.