“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

As long as he acted with relative abandon, as in the early years, relatively unreasoning, then there was no point of conflict. When he tried on the other hand to act in a more reasoning and disciplined manner, when he became convinced of the necessity for discipline and this was in Florida, then he attempted to stifle all spontaneity.

His necessary job was to combine the two, for in him the intuitions and intellect are both strong. To use his abilities fully both had to operate smoothly and simultaneously, and give each other freedom and elbow room. Old fears would make him gyrate, panic-stricken, from one method of operation to the other.

The poetry was not seen as threatening to the disciplined self. Any work of fiction in which his abilities were at all fulfilled would have brought him to this point, and any endeavor such as the psychic work, which was adopted. In other words, for the personality to use its abilities fully that challenge would have had to be faced in every instance but the poetry.

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.

It goes without saying that all of this was fueled by past symbols and associations that then emerged. As the psychic development appeared the overly disciplined self reacted strongly.

Now, you reacted strongly though your activity was not physical.

(9:45. Jane took a very long time to open her eyes, and when she succeeded they were very heavy and bleary. Throughout this extra-long delivery I had thought she was in a deep state, and she now confirmed this; she had but a vague memory of what she had said. “I was out.” As stated, she had been unusually relaxed. “If Seth ever came through undistorted, this was it....”

He feared his own spontaneity then was the result of unreasoning propulsion, and in his early years certainly some of it had been. He could not differentiate, and feared his spontaneous self the more, and he saw you fear your parents’ behavior.

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.

An out-thrust from the spontaneous self was a necessity then. The integration that is taking place will insure an end to such teeter-tottering. Psycho-Cybernetics faithfully followed (underlined) will insure the best possible conscious circumstances to enable the process to come to its speediest conclusions.