“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now Joseph (pause), neither of you should overlook the fact that in one way or another, and regardless of the psychic development, such a crisis point (Jane’s symptoms) would have appeared in Ruburt’s life as a result of personal characteristics, present-life background, and past-life characteristics.

The crisis would have developed on the condition that Ruburt tried to use and develop his spontaneous and intuitive abilities on an adult basis. The cleavage between discipline and spontaneity had long existed; given the all-or-nothing attitude of the personality, there was bound to be a swing, a complete swing from one to the other until the personality learned to combine the two and become more thoroughly integrated.

The development of abilities, your introduction to me and the sessions, came because both of you realized that a rigidity was settling in upon you. The pendulum had swung too far over in both of your cases, to a discipline that became static and frozen. There was a boomerang effect on Ruburt’s part.

A strong breakthrough was needed if the personality was to develop its potentials. The spontaneous self, relegated to the underground, then used all of its strength and forced the issue through opening up the psychic channels, which are very legitimate, and in the past had been an unsuspected deep portion of Ruburt’s personality. The challenge and the conflict were then set.

But without the challenge and the conflict the personality would have had little chance to develop its potential, particularly in terms of understanding. Your own relationship would indeed have deteriorated to some degree. The spontaneity of Ruburt’s nature otherwise would have nearly dried up, and you as well as Ruburt would have sorely missed it. This brings us nearly to the present.

He doubled his discipline, and tried to put the lid upon the spontaneous self. For some time he confused true spontaneity with acts caused by blind propulsion, so he could not trust his spontaneous nature. Your mother for example says what she thinks often. Ruburt therefore thought she was spontaneous; for a while he did not see the blind panic behind the words or acts.

Your father seemed to be, earlier, highly disciplined. Ruburt did not see that the discipline was the result of terror, and was not true discipline. He saw both personalities as frozen, finally, and he thought: if spontaneity and discipline are both false roads, then where do I go? There is no road, and no escape, you see.

Some of the confusion was the result of Ruburt’s attitudes toward spontaneity and discipline, toward the spontaneous and strongly conscientious aspects of his personality.

One word. I do not see any tragic circumstances surrounding the sister of Ruburt’s student (Shirley Bickford), of the kind told to Ruburt. (Pause.) A change of environment would be good, not in an overly permissive atmosphere but one in which some personal freedom is tempered with the expectation of definite achievement of some kind. (Pause.) Any sort of a school meeting that requirement would suffice.