“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Once he became convinced of the validity of the psychic experience, and his abilities, then all playful attitudes deserted him. He grasped at it tenaciously, and added it to the then unchallenged work to which he had, until then, devoted his main attention.

The Catholic church, incidentally, as he knew it, while admitting the mystic experience, was highly suspicious of him in that regard. He was recognized as the too intent, emotional and mystical personality, and to some extent distrusted.

The search for truth and the fear of leading people astray are the primary points here. In the past any intuitive thoughts he felt but could not prove were put into his fiction. This protected him from censure, both from within and without.

(9:40.) Give us time.... The delivery of the material per se in our sessions, now, does not basically bother him. He is afraid of making people lose their faith. It was considered the sin of sins. He felt deeply betrayed particularly by Father Doran, and resolved never to betray others in such a way.

He also knows that such channels lead other people away from, specifically, the Catholic church. He wondered if what he can give can make up for what they might lose. Before the material was public this bothered him, but not to that degree. It worried him when people seem to turn to the material in the same way that they might turn to a church, merely substituting one set of ideas for another, while never experiencing the concepts themselves.

The material you received from him was quite correct. At another level he feared that his relationship with me was the result of unconscious fraud, and trickery, that he had indeed become the false prophet, and conned you and everyone else, including himself.

This was because he had for one thing watched what he thought of as the two faces of Father Doran, who conned others in his preaching then showed quite opposing characteristics afterward. The quality of the material itself often kept him from admitting this feeling. The experience at the writer’s convention also had an affect there, plus the young psychologist’s remarks later—all of this accepted because of the inferiority feelings of childhood.

(10:00.) The feelings prevented him from going ahead far enough to allow his psychic experience to answer some of his doubts, yet he was too convinced of the validity to drop the work.

Some of my material is difficult to accept intuitively and intellectually at one time. You may intuitively grasp a point and intellectually not understand it, or the other way around. But Ruburt insists that he intellectually and intuitively understand each point, and agree with it, or it puts him in the position of publicizing ideas when he is not a hundred percent certain of their validity, and he considers this to some degree dishonest. If he is wrong and people follow him, where is he leading them?

So sometimes you see in such periods he will put off sessions. The three Christs material particularly affects him that way, for to deny the conventional idea of Christ is to antagonize not merely Catholicism but basic Christian belief. The same material presented fictionally would not bother him at all. He stands behind the idea, you see. He is afraid of being attacked, or he is afraid of the work being attacked, for that kind of reason, as his poetry was.

(10:10.) The ESP book put him on record. The people that write to him as the result of his books often bothered him deeply, for he thinks that they look to him as you would to a prophet. And if he cannot help them then he does feel like a false prophet, offering hope and practically in a given situation being unable to give it.

When Venice’s friend committed suicide some time ago, this affected him deeply, for a session had been held and it did not stop the suicide. His symptoms at that point deepened. He greatly enjoys the psychic and intuitive experience itself, the going ahead, but he becomes worried after that point as to how the ideas will be used and interpreted.

Ready arguments for the other side have been taken for granted by him emotionally. One strong portion of him knows well that Christian theology is far from any entire answer, that Christ was not the son of the only God; the other portion of Ruburt is still affected by those beliefs, and he did not realize it.

The emotional beliefs therefore could not be reached. A concerted effort should be made to gain the support of the part of him who understands. Your own reasonable arguments there will help. Point them out. Bring up arguments for that side. Part of this has to do also with the fact that his complete support in St. Vincent’s Catholic orphanage was carried on by a religious order. (For over two years.)

The church itself has changed in that time. The feelings must be brought out into the open so that they can be handled in the light of his current intuitional and intellectual ideas. This is extremely important. You must help him counter them.

He is afraid of hurting people by upturning their views. At times he was told he would come to no good if he continued with independent thinking. Intellectually he did continue. He is frightened of setting up a new religion, afraid. In one of your own sessions at least encourage him to free associate, to say freely now what comes to mind regarding his feelings about the three Christs, and also ideas of the Anti-Christ. Let these freely come. Then go to work on them.