“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The ape on one level represented the animal instincts feared by Ruburt’s mother and grandfather as well, so Ruburt learned to look upon them askance. These instincts are the earthly doors of the soul’s energy. Who closes those doors does so at some peril.

To some extent Ruburt has identified with him. He was after all Ruburt’s mother’s father, and therefore the source out of which Ruburt’s mother came—the higher power, so to speak. The ape emotionally represented the instincts in true light, as dependable, supportive, and as the basis for earthly existence. Ruburt as an infant, then, experienced the strength of the earthly source. This means that he is to trust his instincts as far as letters are concerned, or healing, or whatever. At the same time the ape male and female represents the sexual quality of the earth, male and female being simply other versions of each other. This automatically helps resolve certain conflicts Ruburt had involving male-female identifications. In other terms the past was altered, in that Ruburt now experienced the yearned-for mother love that was warm in its animal female understanding, supportive and strong enough to easily bear a child’s small ragings and hatreds.

In terms of your beliefs and in terms of deeper truths, man is related to the ape, so his experience also brings an even more substantial sense of belonging to the earth, and identification with the utter rightness of instinct.

(9:57.) Give us a moment.... At one point Ruburt saw the ape still male, and then a portion of himself sitting at the library table, for in your position it is the animal instincts themselves that propel you to search for answers, to write books, to explore in your particular way. The ape was at home in the library, and his face was compassionate. Identification with the instinct brings compassion, and that compassion and wonder spark the creative instincts. Ruburt’s idea was still one of controlling those instincts and his “animal” abilities. On another level, because the ape was in the library, compassionate and understanding, Ruburt was seeing symbolically the force of his own physical nature, quite at home with itself, and at home in the psychic library of the mind.

(10:02.) Give us a moment.... In learning to trust the changes in his body occurring now, Ruburt is at the same time learning to trust his own instincts, and the creaturehood of himself. In your society that can be difficult, and he needed some connections. You are also quite correct, in that the ape also acted as an animal medicine man-woman (as in Personal Reality), symbolically acting out a part that once very well could have been performed in fact. Ruburt has been reading about shamans. Their connections with animals are little understood. In his own way however Ruburt began a shaman’s journey for himself, letting the psyche’s images become alive, and the inner workings of the mind made more obvious.

The ape episode served to connect him in trust with his own deepest instincts, and he saw that those were loving. The ape could not have appeared however until after the blond man forcibly threw out that negative image. He dashed it against the wall. The pygmy Indian with the bent legs emerged, signifying Ruburt’s grandfather identification. That identification is simply one of the reasons behind his concern with spontaneity and order, as I hope I have explained earlier this evening.

The woman, not seen that clearly, nevertheless represented the female version possible. The difference in hair coloring represented the fact that these are, so far, idealizations—yet he did identify with them. There were idealizations because he had not yet encountered the ape man-woman, for that connection was necessary before those qualities could be physically actualized. The actualization had to occur in the past, so he became a child again.

(10:30.) Give us a moment.... The silver figure is the other end, the other pole, of the ape. If you will forgive the term, the spiritual guide, as ape was animal guide, for both are related, and both were compassionate. The spiritual guide was the doctor Ruburt heard in his sleep and immediately questioned, and he is quite valid. He is not just a symbol either, but represents a quite real psychic construct, alive in your terms but in a different reality, and connected in a way I cannot explain with Ruburt’s physical being, with the source of the flesh that physically composes him.

It is not the soul, but the soul of the body that you must learn to trust; for the soul in the body represents the corporeal meeting of the physical and nonphysical selves, in the most practical of terms. So Ruburt finds his muscles sore, and in the terms of your culture goes on faith that the soreness is good. But he is not relying alone upon “his own” resources, but upon those great dimensions of energy that connect the soul and body—the silver guide and the ape.