“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Fanatics certainly serve a purpose, and actually they help maintain overall equilibrium of society by serving as examples to others, who often have some of the same beliefs but are of a less explosive nature.

Give us a moment... The fanatic is usually also a person whose vitality is blocked in important ways—yet he manages often to summon great energy, so that even in his denunciations he shows many people who are more timid the demonstration of personal exuberance and energy, however misdirected.

(10:59. I raised a hand to Jane in trance, signaling her to be quiet. For the second time I heard a gentle scratching-rapping at our front screen door. It was a humid night and our living room door was wide open. A young man who had hitchhiked from Oregon stood in the darkness. “You’re too late, man,” I said. On the lawn behind him lay a guitar and a heavy backpack.

(Since I liked him—Michael— as we talked, I sat on the front steps for a few minutes with him. Our neighbor Marian came by, looking for her dog; she stopped to talk to us. By then over half an hour had passed. I gave up on the session. Jane laughed inside the house. We invited our guest in for a beer. He was from Port Arthur, Texas. He was quite intelligent, a musician who had written an “opera,” he told us. Like a number of our other recent callers, he was traveling around the country, seemingly free of all ties, doing odd jobs on occasion, but living on little money. In a way I envied them. Michael had no place to stay, regardless of the weather.

The varying and various fanatical groups, such as, for example, the anti-homosexual Florida contingent, are in a way quite natural and necessary in your country. They serve as focus points for others who have the same ideas but are afraid to really face them or admit their beliefs. A former Miss America does it for them.

I suggest that first of all you ask yourselves what you really want, and what you really believe. (Amused:) I will tell you what you want, my dear friend: you want the books to sell very well, and the message to go out clearly to all. As long as you are not bothered, as long as you do not have to mix with fools—the same fools who compose the various psychological, scientific, or medical societies—the same fools whom you sometimes say do not bother contacting you as long as the Enquirer, that rag, does not annoy you for interviews, and as long as people are not personally affected enough to bother you in any immediate fashion.

Our work is affecting the lives of millions—of millions (repeated in answer to my surprised look at Seth), through direct readership, and through the influence of those readers upon others, who may not, for example, even read the books, or who may read rarely in any case.

It is beside the point to become angry at those who buy the Seth books and not Ruburt’s. Those people do the best they can. Their understanding goes so far at this time. Some of them will go into Ruburt’s books. I said it was beside the point—but beyond that it is somewhat self-defeating. They need encouragement. They act, of course, from their own reasons. Yet your attitudes jointly can telepathically tempt them to Ruburt’s books—or help reinforce their own reluctance.

I mention this so often because, again, I do not want either of you to become self-righteous, for such an attitude narrows any road. The fanatic becomes engrossed in one overall issue. To a lesser degree those who become too concerned with the world’s shortcomings can begin to see nothing but a one-sided one.

(We laughed about it. At the same time I was thinking over Seth’s material in this session so far. I remarked to Jane that if we paid attention to that material, then instead of turning away the people who would be influenced by the newspaper notice, we might be able to influence some of them to buy Seth/Jane’s books.

The important point, however, is that if you are not honest with your own feelings and beliefs, then you feel victimized by the society who will not buy your books. You feel more apart from it. Ruburt imagines himself more isolated, and at the same time threatened. You are always better off building bridges to others, in whatever way is natural to you.

Like the woman who was suddenly appalled at her recovery (from Hodgkin’s disease), you might find yourself suddenly faced with your own reluctance.

(10:40.) They have done you one important service that should not be overlooked: they understood you to be reticent. They did not try to turn you into performers. They are not, indeed, a greedy house. They are not really the greatest business-oriented house, either—but houses who are would have exerted pressures upon you that would far outstrip or outweigh any disadvantages coming from Prentice.