“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I should take the space here to set the scene. After supper this evening I read a news account of the riches accruing to a nationally known popular writer, his son and daughter, who shall be nameless here. Royalties, prime-time TV series, movies, TV specials—there was no area in which the family wasn’t making incredible amounts of money. All they produce is garbage. I was of course especially angry that they were world renowned while I thought Jane’s great abilities were largely unappreciated and ill paid for by Prentice, Bantam, etc. The recent sale of Oversoul Seven to an English publishing house for an unbelievable $100, and Prentice’s recent notice to us of a possible sale of Seth Speaks for translation and publishing by a German house for only $300 bothered me greatly; I just couldn’t believe that so little money was available in Europe, no matter what Prentice told us. [I still don’t.]

(My discussion upset Jane, of course, as she made ready for tonight’s session, and I was left feeling angry and taken advantage of. I also felt that Jane was largely unconcerned by the foreign rights questions, and to me this was rather inconceivable, if such a word can be so qualified.

You have little patience, jointly, with that kind of world. The Hollywood director (Alan Neuman) who called, for example. Ruburt was warm, curious, and solitary. He did not reinforce the director’s sense of his own importance, and the man was used to that. Nor did he speak in the honeyed spiritual tones that the man expected from the psychics he dealt with.

(10:53. Jane’s pace throughout had been good, and limited only by my own writing speed. I thought the material was excellent in all respects. I didn’t see how the insights could be better, I told Jane, and will try hard to implement them. I thought part of the material was hilarious, about our attitudes toward the world. I think that Seth’s expression for me of my feelings toward Jane were most accurate and penetrating—the kind of information one could spend months acquiring with the help of others, say. My own pendulum answers had steered me in the right direction, I saw, but were far short of being complete enough. I felt better than I had in some time.

You identified fairly strongly with your father as a boy. He seldom expressed love verbally toward your mother. He felt that the worst would happen in any given set of circumstances. You long believed emotionally that it was unrealistic to express love or hope, for circumstances would surely prove such expectations to be foolish.

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.

(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.

Your own inclinations and your beliefs did not reinforce his sense of security. The exuberant expression of your love, for your love for him is exuberant, found no expression in the overall of an active, direct, clear route, but was diverted through concern, and through mention of the threats you felt might surround him.

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.

He became extremely frightened when he went to the dentist (last month, 6 weeks), and when you again expressed your concern, but not your love: “I’m afraid you’ve had it,” you said. He was of course afraid of the same thing. But he interpreted your remark verbally as you made it, knowing you love him, but having to search through the concern.

Give us a moment.... For him, quickly now, again the eyes are all right. He applied tension to the head and neck area primarily, causing the difficulty with the teeth and so forth. The body was used like a shield. To some extent the exterior skin thickened, the muscles became fairly rigid, and the joints therefore constrained. The body has been softening, giving him a feeling of vulnerability, you see.

(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.

You did well today, encouraging him in his house walking. Your original “walk for joy” was an “absolute” by contrast making his attempts seem futile. He is afraid that dependence as a woman threatens you because of his own beliefs. Your encouragement of his independence was interpreted as “Don’t dare be dependent.”