“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Late yesterday afternoon my pendulum told me that Jane’s symptoms stemmed from her feeling that she had failed to become a successful “straight” writer—a novelist, poet, essayist, et al.; that she felt she had failed as the serious writer she had always dreamed of becoming, that the psychic work represented a turning down a wrong path; that actually, basically, the psychic work represented failure to her rather than success. I was very excited by these ideas, more excited than I had been in a long time. I intuitively felt them to be true. I discussed them for some little while with her before we went out to a New Year’s Eve party at McClure’s. Jane seemed to agree with the ideas.

(At a quick scan I thought the ideas answered all the questions we’d had about the symptoms over the years—explaining, for instance, their onset before the psychic developments, etc. They seemed to offer a unified theory to cover the years of our marriage, and even Jane’s childhood. I saw at once that if valid they also meant Jane must shelve her projected book, Adventures in Consciousness, and concentrate on things like Rich Bed, the Dialogues (poetry), and, perhaps, let Seth do his own thing in sessions. If this included writing books, okay. But crisis time was here, and something had to be done. I was somewhat puzzled that I hadn’t asked my pendulum this specific set of questions before—or had I? If I had, perhaps I hadn’t understood the answers, I thought; because certainly no action had been taken because of them, along the lines now contemplated....

I told you that as you considered moving your attitudes would suddenly become quite clear, and other issues would be deeply involved. (In the deleted data for December 18, 1972. True.) The idea of mobility in one direction, and of moving, would cause all of your other ideas to move.

(I was quite surprised the other day when Jane told me that our two apartments were okay to her if she was a writer, but not all right for a psychic—especially one who was becoming well known and was visited by all kinds of people, etc. She also told me that to her the idea of stairs represented success and failure—up and down, etc.)

The creativity was in the sessions. Because he felt a responsibility to the work, and because of another publication—a hardcover book—he consented to The Seth Material. The “acclaim” (in quotes) of a tour helped revive him initially, and he began ideas of a novel.

Because neither of you were willing to take the chance earlier, nor did you feel financially secure enough to do so. You were both willing to put up with the situation. The idea of physically moving automatically brought these issues into the light, and you helped Ruburt immensely. He would never have tried completely to write the book, but he could have struggled nearly halfway through—

(Jane wrote Eleanor today; it will be mailed tomorrow. I have obtained the paint to do her workroom. Tomorrow Jane calls the paper to place our ad about a house. We have made a list of important items to carry out as soon as possible re these sessions, our ideas, etc.

(The galleys for Oversoul Seven arrived yesterday. This has been most opportune—and in them Jane was delighted to see many hints and ideas for future work —many clear signs that she had already begun to feel her way toward the future; including poetry. Our opinions of the book have risen apace, though we liked it before also.)