“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Ruburt felt that you did not trust his relationship with Tam as far as the spontaneous handling of business was concerned, and that perhaps the dissatisfaction you expressed about Prentice had to do with a certain emotional sloppiness, where both he and Tam did not have the proper regard for detail, and lacked a kind of integrity that you valued.

A cruel trick, Ruburt felt, offering promises unfulfilled. Yet at the same time Ruburt was able to catch an inner glimpse of that world, its emptiness and the obvious existence of important dilemmas, ignorance, and that finally—it was simply another field of human endeavor.

He felt he did not know much, but that he knew more in ways important to him than these people did. They were coming to him when he so desperately had wanted to join them, thinking that his idealized, youthful hopes would there find fruition.

In the meantime our books began to do well financially. These people, he felt, were not the romantic artists he had dreamed of, but sometimes very calculating, and would blemish an artistic product with what he believed to be moral incompetence.

Seven represented the same kind of synthesis, and these were both Jane-type productions. After these Ruburt could not make up his mind. If you did not really approve of Prentice as a publisher, then he wondered seriously whether he should follow through with a new house, and with the hopes that Eleanor offered. You typed my book, and I appreciate the work and the reasons, but Ruburt felt it was also because you did not trust Prentice, and always that you thought another publisher would do a better job overall.

In the meantime—now, another string—he felt the need again to come closer to you, and you ended up eating over there (Apartment 5). He had decided because of your more frequent demonstrations of love that he must try again for the emotional rapport with you that was so important.

This immediately brought certain aspects to light that had been hidden to some extent while you were more physically separated. Some of this has to do, again, with the fact that you thought your concern automatically expressed your love. You were together more. When you saw him try to get up he knew you loved him, but the frown was what he saw. He was always trying to hide from you. Part of it was his projection because he felt you thought he was so stupid for having anything wrong at all, so the more he saw you frown the stupider he felt, and the more guilty. And the more he tried to hide his condition.

Your own reactions since our last session are excellent. Ruburt felt, finally, that you saw him at his worst in the morning, and did not turn away from his as some crooked, broken, grotesque physical person. That was what he was afraid of in the light of your perfectionist tendencies. In a strange way he was relieved; seeing what he has been trying to hide, he feels, will give the both of you a basis from which you can operate, in which any improvements are appreciated.

He made the bed that day. Usually he would think of how slow and clumsy he was, and if you were waiting or watching how impatient you might be. That day, he thought “After Rob seeing how I really am in the morning—if he saw me now he would see how much better I am,” and he felt proud of doing what he was doing as well as he could.

Another string: Because he hid from you for the reasons given, then he would become angry at you, perversely enough, when you did not understand his great joyful triumph when he felt like dancing. You expected it, from the standpoint of someone physically in good condition.

Since he felt that you judged his physical behavior from that “superior” position, then he felt that no improvement except complete recovery would get your approval. Anything else would always fall short.

Now: This is not as rambling as it may seem. I take it for granted that you understand the jumps in time. This was merely to remind you of certain continuities without going over events already mentioned—so going back to the point in time mentioned earlier in tonight’s session: when Dialogues was finished Ruburt tried it out on Prentice, and felt briefly that Tam might take it. Even then there was talk from a time earlier about a paperback deal. This had excited Ruburt, as had the Dialogues possibility. Both fell through.

After Eleanor’s refusal Ruburt was left with Rich Bed. Now this is his projection, and one he only realized at break: he felt that any incomplete manuscripts were indications of a waste of time, and that you thought he should publish everything he wrote, and that an unpublished manuscript was a blot of sorts. You often mentioned Dreams for example, when he was only too willing to forget it. So he felt guilty about Rich Bed even though it wasn’t finished.

Immediately the plans for the last trip here were made. In the meantime Ruburt heard of the Bantam deal, and Eleanor was saying “Hold off,” without giving the reasons. Ruburt was frightened. Supposing he got Prentice to hold off and Eleanor’s deal fell through? Physically he had never really forced a body image through athletics, for example. Feelings of any powerlessness, then, found easiest expression physically. He had felt relatively in control, business-wise, used to dealing directly, and this is one of the reason why he and Tam work together intuitively and business-wise so well.

Remembering your past ideas toward Prentice, he wondered, regardless of what you said, if you thought he should stay with them. He was very afraid of losing a contract with Prentice for Aspects, and a Bantam contract, while waiting around for another arrangement. At the same time he was afraid of making demands at Prentice for fear he would discover that they didn’t care if he stayed or not. Feeling that way he still went ahead on his own, and felt happily vindicated. The whole affair, with his reactions now, still had him at the point where he did not think he could physically recover, and he was caught in a panic that he tried to hide from you.

Ruburt felt his consciousness more powerfully in almost any other area. It has been difficult for him to accept the fact that the mind literally controls the body. He now sees that he must exert his abilities in that direction, and your own understanding of the issue in that area will be of help to him.