“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.

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.

Being shorter also would bring about physical alterations that would themselves protect against instinct or animal behavior. This fit in with his work ideas, and yours, earlier, as given—cutting out distractions, et cetera.

(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.