“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The last session, deleted, for June 27, had helped both Jane and me—at least once more we’d started the painful process of searching for insights into our belief systems. Of course we had questions. For myself, I listed the following before the session, as I’d promised Seth last time I would:

(2. From a discussion Jane and I had the other day: Why do Seth’s books sell so much better than her own? I’ve always been upset by this, and several recent visitors have admitted reading only the Seth books. The question has been exaggerated lately by Prentice-Hall’s decision to let Dialogues go out of print —John Nelson’s office wrote Jane last week, offering to sell us as many copies as we wanted at 85 cents a copy. Tam also told Jane last Friday that some other publishers of poetry have turned down Dialogues for paperback editions. This situation also makes me think that if I wrote Through My Eyes, people wouldn’t pay much attention to that either, on a large-enough scale to make it worth doing. This is spite of an occasional request I get from a fan about that book.

They are afraid of vulnerability. They are between the comic book world and your own. They yearn for an authority they can trust. Ruburt’s books show that it is not all that easy, in their terms. They want to believe that he depends upon me to make all his decisions, and they do not want to hear about his independent thinking. They are between dependence and independence, at the level of which I am speaking.

You have to be fairly intellectual to read Ruburt’s books. You think my books require much effort, and people often say so—yet you get letters from people who are nearly illiterate. This is nothing against Ruburt’s books, for they are excellent—but people become frightened sometimes because they do not want to compare themselves to Ruburt. They want to think that I spring automatically into your lives, as Superman. They did not question Superman. Only a simple change of clothing was required for our hero, Mr. Kent. They want to endow me with an authority that will make up for the authority they are trying to be free of. They do not want Ruburt’s inquiring mind to intrude.

(With much humor and irony:) What comic book reader wants to bother with a Clark Kent who, before his transformation, distracts the reader with such beside-the-point questions as “What am I doing? How do I, a mere mortal, suddenly turn into Superman? Is this mission necessary? At what point am I me? When does the transformation occur? What are my motives? What is the nature of the reality that lets this miracle occur?”

They want to keep Clark Kent and Superman entirely separate on a mental, psychical, and physical basis, and only in the terms of our analogy, and in line with our discussion, I become a supersoul rather than superman. They do not want my authority questioned. For one thing, they are tired of questioning. They think that if they had their own supersoul they would have far better sense than Ruburt, and they would use me as if I were a magic genie. They are afraid Ruburt might go too far, and question me out of existence, for they do not understand that Ruburt’s questions, and your own, your sense of integrity, are partially responsible for a “superman” rather than a supermouse.

Practically speaking now, all of my suggestions should be followed, given in the last sessions, and they should be read again by each of you. The loving encouragement, again, is highly important, for here you must change habits, both of you, of conditioning. I do not think you believe me yet, but I must repeat: (After a long pause:) I am searching for a new way to explain this....

(2. How will “Unknown” Reality do? Seth’s material this evening was making me wonder if my notes were going to be detrimental in that work. But I was also simply curious about whether “Unknown” Reality was going to do as well as the other Seth books.