“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(On Sunday afternoon and evening we were visited by Andrija Puharich and Joyce Petschek. We had a most enjoyable time. Andrija recorded Jane, Seth, and Sumari—all of which saw Jane coming through at her best. He is to send us a copy of his tape. Tonight I asked that Seth at least comment upon the visit, since I had the feeling it marked a turning point for us as far as our attitudes went; about meeting others, etc.

(To me:)You are stubborn. Your own thoughts wore you out. You needed to let down, and you would not do it. You could not take a vacation, you felt. You worried about time and your painting and “Unknown” Reality, and you would not relax. You worried about other issues that I told you about—taxes and money. You not only worried about the present, but you dwelled upon the “past mistakes.” You remembered doing Ruburt’s Dialogues drawings, and Adventures diagrams, and those thoughts crowded your present. To some extent, it is quite valid to say—though you may not agree with me—that you might as well have had all that work to do now as well.

Those feelings about time, and the way you handled them, seemed to make your own time shrink. On top of that, you projected worries into the future as well. Your body, very wisely, stepped in. It short-circuited you for a while. You were too weak to worry.

At the same time, you could not enjoy such enforced idleness—far be it from that—so the period was highly unpleasant. This was to help you save face: you didn’t take time out because you wanted to, but because you were so miserable that you could not work—and then yelled out in outrage that the body so betrayed you. The body’s resiliency gave you the breathing space that you needed, and would not take consciously. It was responsive to your own desires and needs, where you consciously were not.

(A note for the record: I tried to use the pendulum to help me fathom the reasons for my illness—but with very little success. It’s one of the very few times the pendulum didn’t help. Even at the time I felt I wasn’t asking the right questions; sometimes the answers received were contradictory. But mainly, with hindsight I can see that I hadn’t asked the right questions to begin with. It didn’t occur to me that I needed a break.)

At the same time however other issues were served, already mentioned. You understood what Ruburt had been working through—at a much lighter level, of course, and at least to some degree Ruburt could feel that he was helping you physically. You also together solved the other problems mentioned, where he did not panic, as he might have in the past, but continued his own improvement.

In the world as you know it, it is quite natural to feel sad, or even despondent at times. These are portions of the emotional reality that are native to your kind. These are not negative states on their own, any more than twilight is less natural than dawn. They are not even unpleasant states on their own. It is natural, then, to feel depressed at times. No one constant emotional state is meant to prevail. There are gradations and nuances of feeling and sensation that sweep through your own experience, the result of quite natural variations. Your overall beliefs, however, can be so exaggerated in a negative manner that finally some people accept as valid the most negative picture of the world.

I said that the body’s resiliency is far more important than any other consideration. You live in a cultural world. I cannot make decisions for you, based upon your social mores. Ruburt can save the majority of his teeth. Now in certain terms that would be considerable—that is, an achievement. In certain times people lost their teeth, when they did, as Ruburt has, and in a natural fashion. They simply dropped out of your head. The unlucky ones had to have them pulled, by the most torturous of processes. Lucky ones like Ruburt went on chomping merrily with the teeth that were kept, and with the gums between that became quite adequate for the necessary procedures.

Ruburt is not going to be satisfied with such a state, however, nor would you, for in your society it does not work that way. You are concerned with cosmetics. Ideally, Ruburt can regenerate the gums overnight. Practically, the gums are being regenerated, as the rest of his body definitely is. If he does not have his teeth out, he will probably lose two more that are very loose—but not for one or two years. By that time the rest of the teeth will be solid enough to stay in his head, and be operative. One tooth is in the back and probably would not bother him, since no one can see it anyhow. The other would be noticeable. That is your answer—

The muscles and ligaments have their own characteristics. The body must maintain its overall balance. As Ruburt definitely recovers, certain muscles not adequately used in the past must regain not only agility but strength, and begin to stretch to their natural capacity. They will be sore at times. This is not a negative pattern, however. The very soreness is a sign of the muscle’s reaction—its life.

You affect matter all the time, of course, including the matter of your bodies. To some extent you breathe “life” into your machinery. Geller must be a performer, with all the characteristics that implies. He displays the obvious, but that obvious is not at all obvious to most people, and so they need the lesson.