“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The search for truth in the beginning was carried on within the framework of the church. In a way he was rewarded for conventional thought, and punished for unconventional thought. His poetry was accepted and praised artistically, when the ideas agreed with dogma.

The church was a support in the household against his mother. When the poetry was thus criticized, Ruburt was afraid the support would be withdrawn. The thoughts were considered extremely dangerous. They were not treated lightly. To some extent Ruburt equates me with a more knowledgeable Father Traynor.

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.

(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.

He was trying to go ahead and not go ahead at the same time.

(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.

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.

The difference is this: he was not presenting the poetry as truth for people to follow.

Many ideas are being presented in Oversoul Seven to get around that difficulty. He had been taught the dire consequences in church terms of losing your soul, and he was afraid of leading people astray whenever religious areas were approached. He believed enough however in his abilities and in his work to continue despite the deep dilemma.

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.)

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.

Because they were formed at a time before the intellectual and intuitive abilities developed, and were not a problem until the intellectual and intuitive abilities seemed to come upon a system of thought that was in opposition to the underlying emotional beliefs. Until then there was no conflict.