“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(1. My stomach. Have had a lot of discomfort lately. On June 22 the pendulum told me that my stomach bothers me not because I don’t spend enough time painting, but because I feel guilty at spending the time I do, in view of all the other work with Jane that I feel I should be doing: working on sessions, “Unknown” Reality, etc.

(2. Did I go overboard on “Unknown” Reality? Why did I choose to do notes for that work, let alone publish it in two volumes? [Jane agreed to these procedures, of course.] Were these decisions mistakes?

(3. A: Why do we attract the kind of unannounced visitors that we do? I asked this question because of the episode of last Saturday afternoon, when I caught our unexpected visitor from the Bronx sneaking in through the living room window, while I lay taking a nap on the couch.

(5. On the decision we made—Rob to finish “Unknown” Reality, then Psyche, perhaps with my help. [This decision leaves Jane free to do fresh creative work—whatever she wants to do. I understand that it’s vital that she have this freedom.]

Popular novelists and writers are above all things people of their times. They are socially oriented, dealing with lively discourse. They cannot see beyond the times. As a rule, however, they enjoy people as people are. They enjoy stupid people, wicked people, cowardly people, bigoted people, and sometimes wise people too. They do not make demands. They share the belief systems of their times, and they are richly rewarded—generally speaking, now—for there is overall no great conflict between their natural works, their writing, and the world at large.

The world responds to such people’s acceptance. Obviously escapism is involved—but at certain levels of interaction the beliefs smoothly flow from creation to market. No great challenges are presented, and no real condemnations; and when these do occur they are of a conventional nature, perhaps already stylish accusations. They are part and parcel of the social world.

While these people may sometimes be quite original in their particular field and interest, they are still used to dealing with others, through various means that are established—workshops, seminars, and so forth. Seldom do they leave those social rituals.

Not only is our own work rather unique, but you have no academic credentials. You have avoided, for example, holding seminars of that nature. In that framework many psychologists, for example, would feel comfortable, but you offer no such bridge to anyone. You avoid “the wild psychic world” of cults, semicults, and so forth, and above all you are individualists who do not play according to game rules.

Psychics are supposed to stick together, at least informally, before the world (humorously). They expect from each other a kind of blanket approval that neither of you give. Our books are being read by many “important people” in medicine, science, religion, and the arts. They are indeed forming events. You are to that extent affecting your society. You do not, however, through your attitudes play the kind of game that is necessary.

(10:00.) For one thing, you do not respect position, and your attitudes are clear, through your notes and Ruburt’s introductions. You do not play up whatever “important” contacts you have made. Ruburt could easily have given impressions concerning, say, Richard Burton, to Goodheart (Bill), who would have been initially impressed, and would have spread the word. Ruburt disdains such maneuvers.

You do not fit any of the current patterns, and you make no effort to—nor do you offer any face-saving devices for scientists of high stature. Anyone of the highest stature will come to you if you offer them personal readings. They will not come to you when you say “You create your own reality” in the same fashion.

The society is supporting you. It is accepting your work, and in your terms—those terms that exist because of your beliefs and your attitudes. The books are being read, though you do not go on tours. You do not play any of the games, and you do not have a healthy give-and-take with that society. You are ahead of the times, and behind them—yet through the point of power you affect those times. You change them.

You have continued along these lines because of your intents. I placed no demands upon you from the beginning. You made certain decisions and you have stuck more or less with them. You want to affect your society in your time —indirectly (loudly, with amusement): you do not want to put up with the people.

Flattery is no social crime. It is a psychological art of its own, taken for granted in all circles. You do not flatter others in personal encounters. You make no effort to cultivate the kind of characteristics involved. Ruburt has them, and ignores them. Some important people, in your terms, do not contact you personally except on rare occasions. Those who bang at your doors are the antisocial, the drifters, the troubled, or those so enthusiastic that they also ignore all social rules, in which case you two rise up in arms.

There are publishing games also, and you do not play these. If you play those games and do poorly, you at least have a right to shout “foul” now and then—and I will tell you something: Prentice looks out for your interests in the person of John (Nelson) far more than you give him credit for. He likes you.

Ruburt is verbal. He loves to talk. He likes to hear you talk. Oftentimes your stomach upsets you because your love for Ruburt makes you concerned, and in most instances the stimulus is money. An occasion will arise, or a period of time, in which your love for him wants to find expression. You do this by expressing your concern that his work is not being duly appreciated in monetary terms (as I did this evening).

You might feel he is being taken advantage of. You do not say “I love you. I admire your work so that I want to see it duly appreciated.” Verbally oriented, Ruburt hears only an implied order, or criticism. The conflict with the stomach always involves money, however—taxes sometimes, for example—and implies a period or situation in which you think he is being taken advantage of.

You are particularly sensitive here because of the male beliefs of your culture, and the feeling that Ruburt’s books are his rather than, say, yours. You want to show him that you appreciate that by your concern, but you do not express the love verbally half as much. Period.

When you think that Ruburt is being taken advantage of then by the world, in any way involving money, then you feel guilty that you do not use painting to procure money.

(10:43.) Your stance with the world is involved. Behind it all, however, is the feeling that you do not express your love verbally, or through touch, to Ruburt, so that instead you look out for ways that feel he is being taken advantage of; and through that concern, you express your love. He does not understand this.

You say, as in tonight’s episode (before the session) that you must express your feelings—of dissatisfaction and concern—and that is true. The difficulty is that you only express part of your feelings—not the love that originally initiated those feelings that you do express.

Your father expected the worst of the world. You have not seriously, with determination, examined those beliefs. If they were true the world simply would not have lasted this long. Nuclear destruction has little to do with it. If anything, it adds to my argument—for if those theories really held sway, one nation or another by now would have already destroyed your world. Hence, you do not make any simple, joyful remarks, like “The book will be out in England or Germany,” and indeed, you take little pleasure from that, but leap ahead to the imagined threats. A man protects his family because he loves it—but in his love he can see threats all around.

Part of this does have to do with beliefs concerning sex (as Jane wrote recently), in that he feels a woman’s position is basically less solid than the male’s to begin with. He was afraid that his ideas would be ridiculed because he was a woman, not having the credentials of the accepted academy or sex.

He reacts practically, then, by avoiding what he thinks of as conflict, and you do not help in that regard, for by temperament you are not particularly attracted to the world. He feels he is so attracted, temperamentally, and so puts on physical guards. The bridge here involves the natural world, his love of nature, the connections between poetry, strolling the natural world as opposed to the social one.

(11:30.) Give us a moment.... He, however, needs by nature more contact with other people than you do. He has learned to repress feelings, and he believed heartily that repression was necessary to his work, to maintain your privacy, to provide time, to cut out distractions, and to focus attention and expression.

He felt that the female was not temperamentally equipped to naturally handle such problems, and so adopted the symptoms. Because you so often expressed your concerns rather than your love, your fears rather than your hopes, and because of his own nature, the outside world appeared more threatening. He is by nature rather optimistic. From you he believed he learned that optimism was shallow, unrealistic, and that people were not to be trusted. He never believed in conflict. He is not abject, but he believes heartily in having nothing to do with an arena of activity in which he feels he might meet ridicule or criticism.

You do not expect the world to understand good work. You expect the artist, in whatever field, who is truly good, to be shunted aside. Your own hopes rise despite those beliefs, and have worked for you. But you have felt jointly that it was unsafe to trust the world; unrealistic; and while you could maintain a mental isolation, Ruburt adopted a physical one.

The muscles of the neck have been lengthening, and the head area has been releasing. Generally speaking, his eyes have been restricted in the past by the head motions. As the neck muscles began to loosen, the eyes were required to move in ways they had not been for some time. The muscles were stiff in the eyes. Unequal tensions resulted—this also having to do with his beliefs as stated, and the fact that he did not want to type old material, particularly without new material coming.

(12:01.) His worry about his condition added additional tension. The working men (for Frank Longwell) made him feel as if the world intruded, and by its standards he felt to some extent exposed. Here were the two of you, doing what in the world’s eyes he felt was in direct opposition to its standards—the brawny, outdoorsy, hearty, family oriented males involved.