“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now. There are some further points, unrecognized items that we have not touched upon. They are fairly important and play their part in Ruburt’s attitudes. I am pointing out patterns, now, that he has not recognized.

They exerted force because he was not consciously aware of them, nor ready to face them in those terms. Some of this will go a good way in explaining portions of his behavior. If you have questions ask when I have finished.

He felt, as a child now, that he had no rights. Nothing was his by rights. Anything could be taken from him at any time. While he lived in one house, still the home itself was always in jeopardy. His mother frequently told him that she would keep him only if he was good, that only Marie’s good graces kept the child from going to an asylum. The mother’s affections were not the child’s by right, but dependent upon how well the child cared or performed.

To a large extent in even small things therefore, he felt he had no rights per se, no right to ask you for example for anything. Remember early tales he tells about feeling guilty for buying a lipstick. Before tonight’s session he mentioned that the class wine was gone. He meant obviously that it must be replaced, but would never directly ask you to do so, feeling he had no right.

This explains much of his behavior in terms of spending money at the store, and so forth. (Pause.) Give us time… He did not feel that any love was his by right, yours or anyone else’s: therefore he did not feel worthy of it, and in the face of any difficulty between you he suspected it, thought then that you no longer loved him.

To voice any dissatisfaction to you verbally was highly difficult, for you could then take away your love and affection, as his mother did, for she would not stand, in Ruburt’s eyes, for such voiced aggression. He had to be quiet therefore to preserve your love.

The backed-up feelings helped bring about the rigidity over a period of time. He was operating to a large degree according to the code long set down by his grandfather: be quiet, do not argue, be aloof, and above all never raise your voice.

Policy however shadowed everything he did, for he carried it into every activity. Whenever he thought anything differently than the opinions you voiced, he felt inward and refused to express himself regardless of the issue involved—its triviality or its importance.

As mentioned earlier in other sessions he felt, erroneously, for some time that your love for him depended upon his performance as a writer and in sessions, since it could not be his by right. He had to test the love therefore by skipping sessions to see if you still loved him. If you objected it meant you did not.

If you did not object, it meant you did not care for the sessions. In the psychic realm therefore he dared not voice any feelings that you did not voice. The unvoiced fear always was that you would abandon him because he had no rights.

Your going to the store for him without asking proves that you love him. He would never ask you to do anything for him, for he felt he had no right to do so, or to your love. He needed a strong excuse therefore in order to ask you to do anything. One excuse was that he could not do it himself.

He was afraid that you did not love and cherish him for himself, and too embarrassed, rigid and proud to continue seeking assurances from you, as he used to do.

The symptoms, beside other issues, have been a crying out to you for a love he feels he does not deserve but needs, a love he feared you could forget. He feared always that you would go your way in your work and life, and emotionally leave him alone. He could not bear that eventuality.

The symptoms also served to punish you for making him go to such extremes, because physically they obviously hampered the expression of that love. He is possessive and jealous, and gave you his entire loyalty. He was afraid you would flee as your father fled. He would not (in quotes) “humiliate himself” to his way of thinking by crying after you, hammering at your door. He transferred the entire dilemma to the physical realm.

Ruburt hoped they would bring the two of you closer together after your illness. Instead he feared that they drove you farther apart, in that he feared you would use them to spend time away from him rather than with him, and in that he did not feel able to express his own ambiguous feelings—the ideas of performance entering in here.

On one level then the sessions were an attempt to retain your love and give him a right to it. Hence his later feelings that you loved him only for the sessions carried a certain charge. Now this is one of the most important sessions you have been given on your own affairs. I suggest a break. He would quite literally do anything to retain your love—hence his feelings sometimes that you sent him out on this psychic pilgrimage. This feeling however, having its roots in “lack of rights” and his alliance with you, also provides him with the unity upon which his life is based: the poetry, the psychic work, and yourself. A trio, you see.

(9:38. Jane’s trance had been deep. “He did a funny thing,” she said. “He socked me out real good so I couldn’t back out; yet I remembered a lot of that. I’m going to hide….” Her pace had been fast. Resume at 9:50.)

Ruburt’s sense of worth came from his writing self. There he felt on firm ground. It carried him through all of his early years, this belief in the writing self that automatically justified his existence and more (underlined) than made up for any other lacks, he felt. It made him then superior, and effectively hid the other sense of worthlessness.

Though this was true, the writing self for the first time began to question itself, its achievements, and the new field it had entered. It had never questioned itself before. This brought forth some conflicts, for the writing self had been Ruburt’s justification of your love. He had a right to it because he was a writer, not because he was himself.

When he began to doubt the writing self in this new alliance with the psychic, then the framework became shaky. Some of this was a creative psychic and artistic endeavor that had to be worked through, whether or not it shook the foundations, you see.

He was afraid shortly before our sessions began that you had largely lost your love for him, and he began frantically to initiate methods of insuring it. The sessions were on the one hand a gift to you, by which means your health could be restored. He felt your physical withdrawal strongly during your illness previously, felt on several occasions physically attracted to other men, and became terrified. Walt did not want him physically, but he did not love Walt. He feared you were turning away from him in those terms. He was frightened that his sexual appetite would attract him to others and betray him, so he closed the door on it as best he could.

There was also the idea of channeling that energy into our sessions, this of course at a deeply unconscious level. Instead he felt that you latched upon the sessions so that they came before he did personally—that you demanded performance there in sessions, while not in bed. In an odd way he felt that you used them against him, in other words—this during the time of tests, in that area.

He did not feel they had served that particular purpose, yet he felt the sessions too legitimate to drop then, and the psychic work too fascinating to disown. They seemed not to have brought you closer together however, to him. Precisely at the time the strong symptoms began, the ESP book was slated for publication. You had received the cover, and the writing self was facing its own conflicts also: was the psychic work its natural fulfillment, or a disastrous side trip? The two of you were not communicating well. He did not feel you were proud enough of that book. He was afraid it did not justify your love. His symptoms then began.

The first strong twinges came earlier when the young psychologist touched certain triggers, indicating that the sessions were a way of handling you, because amid all of the other motives and conditions, he knew they were also a method of keeping your love.

This unconscious knowledge frightened him. He was afraid it meant that the sessions were just (underlined) a fraudulent method of manipulating you, and hence not legitimate. This of course was not the case.

Any money he made was always simply a way of winning your approval, in the terms that you wanted. He had many good ideas that he felt you would have been against that would have worked out very well, but he was afraid of going against you.

Now you were drawn to him because you sensed precisely that deep love of his, and needed it to add to your own vitality and substance. If you were ever tempted, particularly in earlier times, to isolate yourself to an unhealthy degree, Ruburt was precisely your insurance. You counted on him to call you back, to insist. You counted on that remedy. He was also your own insurance against being swallowed by your own parents, and he saved you from that possibility, which was present.

You knew he would not allow it, while you gave yourself time to grow in understanding. Otherwise you might well have continued your earlier performance, and moved in with your parents, to bail out your younger brother in a situation which would have then been present.

When Ruburt felt his other efforts did not insure what he wanted, he became highly frustrated and frightened. He alternately retreated from you in hurt bewilderment, railed at you silently, and still felt that what he wanted was not in your nature to give, and for that reason also he had no right to ask it.

He felt guilty then at asking you to change your mode of behavior, and felt you would construe this to mean he was grasping and wanted all of you and meant to allow you no freedom; which again, was not the case.

No one had loved him at all, however. If getting sick insured him a certain amount of your affection and notice, brought about gallant behavior, then he was willing to pay the price.

Now this early summer he improved, and to a large degree, for several reasons. His defiance was finally aroused, a sense of personal worth rushed to the surface, a sense of independence, the feeling “Well if you wanted to leave him go ahead,” all of which released some pressure. Besides this during your vacation you spent a lot of time and attention on him.

You made love frequently, and began an open communication area. The night of the Milligan party he did very well. You spoke some words to him, mentioning that his performance still needed much more progress. Unfortunately he took this to mean that you did not appreciate his efforts, did not love him, and cautioned him that he had better not give up those symptoms yet.

Your afternoon activities today are but a hint of natural communications that you have both let lag. As you both ascertained, this is an excellent method. For one thing the activity engages body, mind and spirit in joyful pursuit. Spontaneity is encouraged. Physically, hormones and chemicals are brought into activity that are otherwise sluggish. It is not your role, necessarily, to make up for the love Ruburt did not have as a child, yet bodily caresses and fond verbal endearments provide him with exactly the kind of soothing assuring elements that he needs, and that will result in health improvement.

You can woo him back to health. It may seem that you need not do this—that he should do it alone, but because your relationship is so involved this is by far the procedure that will rouse his own desire for health. Do you follow me?

I am not saying therefore that the burden is on you, to woo him back. It is good sense. The open communication will help immensely. It will help if you do not let him retreat from it when he is tempted by the old habit.