“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(A hassle began developing last Thursday, involving Pat Golbitz at Pocket Books, Grace Bechtold at Bantam, and Tam, John Nelson, and Jane at Prentice-Hall. Nothing serious, but still somewhat upsetting. Also educational. There’s no need to go into all the complicated details here; it’s enough to say that the photos Bantam used in Seth Speaks were involved, especially the cover shot of Jane; as well as bids for Oversoul Seven between Pocket Books and Bantam; Jane’s fears that she’d end up committed for two more Seven books she hasn’t written yet; and various misunderstandings concerning ethics, expired option, and an offer to Jane to go to work for Simon & Schuster-Pocket Books, and to take Tam with her.

Now: comments concerning several areas. First of all, generally pertaining to yourself. You have been trained, like most of your contemporaries, to deal with an unsafe universe—to hold your own amid tumultuous threats—social, economic, spiritual or otherwise.

You work at home. You are reacting, and have been, to some of your mother’s attitudes toward men who work at home, so you try to prove to yourself and others that this is really not only as difficult as outside work, but more so. If people might think you have little to do all day because they do not see you going to a job, then you can show that you have even less time to yourself than others.

When you begin to realize that you do indeed live in a safe universe, these patterns of reaction begin to break up. To some extent however as they do you can feel weaponless, or unprotected. Then you read the newspaper and you see that New York City is in great financial difficulty. In a certain way this is almost reassuring, because it correlates with the old habitual belief system that says “Aha, yes, there is a threat. I was right all along.” Thus the older beliefs momentarily feel their old unity, and it is, again, realistic behavior to feel yourself also threatened.

(“All right.” I opened a beer for Jane.)

John can be assured of their worth, then, and so can Prentice and so can you. At the same time the so-called conflict is also a result of your new beliefs—but taking the form of events that seemingly make sense to all of you.

Worrying about taxes, again to whatever degree, is the same sort of thing. It is as if you can trust your abundance only if you can prove to yourselves that there is a threat connected with it, or say “After all, it is not all that good.” These are all examples, yet they point out habitual reactions that belong to the unsafe universe, that seem appropriate and realistic there.

Now about Pocket Books. Interesting and amusing. The woman there (Pat Golbitz) picked up all of your own negative ideas—yours and Ruburt’s—about Fell and Prentice, and aimed them at John (Nelson). This confirmed John’s belief that he is not understood. He would not feel it safe to be understood in an unsafe world.

(John, in turn, called Pat unethical because she called Jane about the details of all of this, and then offered to take Jane away from Prentice-Hall. Both John and Grace are upset also because Pocket Books thought about using the same photo of Jane on the cover of their book—The Coming of Seth—that Bantam had used on the cover of their issue of Seth Speaks.)

What he terms “heroic impulses” were impeded because of his beliefs, and the whole concept will become much clearer to him in the very near future. He will become quicker in his motion at all levels. Certain necessary developments are taking place that will appear in Politics, and they are developments that will now be within his reach.