“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Ruburt’s grandfather gambled compulsively in an attempt to hide his sexual wants, and deny them. He did not trust the body—his or anyone else’s. There is no need to go into his reasons here.

He abhorred liquor because he was aware of the tales saying that liquor was the Indians’ downfall. He tried to be “civilized,” to counteract the Indian image, and he repressed his feelings. He was an outsider and a small, short, tubercular-looking man. He felt himself a pygmy, because of size and because as an Indian he was put down. He never related to his French background.

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.

(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.

He also identified with his grandfather as a child, seeking protection from his mother in someone who seemed to love him more. The negative image, dashed then, gave forth the symbolized image that he had been using in his mind. He then turned into a baby, because the identification began early. Do you follow me?

It was not necessarily a negative identification. That negative quality emerged only when he felt the need for greater protection, when he threatened to become uncivilized—going against his society in unforeseen ways. When he became important at all in world terms, he could no longer be a pygmy, and therefore lost a part of that identification that he felt had protected him against his mother and the feared spontaneity or instincts. So he would become shorter.

(10:17.) Give us a moment.... These represented the power of the body not being used, the animal instincts denied. The vitality. He identified with them perfectly however as himself, or versions. The woman’s was a more possible version of himself. The male figure however represented the fact that he believes that strong muscular motion is a male characteristic, and not one that he feels belongs to mentally oriented males. In this life he never sought tall, strongly developed, muscular, large-boned males out, but avoided them. He felt they would not understand his mental properties. Here indeed he saw a symbolic representation of Ruburt—not one that could be physically materialized with his bone structure as a woman, but a figure of idealistic physical proportions that also possessed great mental faculties to match.

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.

There were in-between episodes where he saw himself more or less an adolescent, weak and spindly. That represented a period in his life where he felt physically insecure. At his grandfather’s death he felt betrayed, then, because he had felt his grandfather invulnerable. It was then, though he forgot, that he was given the elixir to strengthen him.

(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.

Give us a moment.... In terms perhaps difficult to describe the muscles run through the mind’s journeys, and speak out their own questions, even as the soul speaks out its questions through the flesh. Ruburt’s book is barely begun, or the experiences connected with it and in it. The body and the consciousness are learning to walk and function in a new way. The animal’s and the soul’s comprehension are one, and not alienated. Ruburt’s body is completely releasing itself, but it is of utmost importance that he go along with the process, and this experience was meant to provide the necessary connections between body and soul.

(I protested, saying that I hoped she wouldn’t “say something now that I’ll wish later I’d written down.” For one of the few times during these sessions, I refused to pick up my pen and notebook. Even though Jane repeated that she was willing to give the material. She needed the rest. Seth of course had no problems; he was all set to go.