“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(We had several questions for Seth, including the one noted at the end of the last session: Why didn’t the unconscious realize it was going too far in its protective role? Why didn’t it back off? Jane wrote the question up on a separate list, so that we’ll make sure the inquiries that develop are taken care of by Seth. Two corollary questions I came up with yesterday are these: Does the unconscious know there is a physical body? If it does, what is its conception of that body?

(As we sat for tonight’s session we made two important connections; 1. When the refrigerator turned itself off I expressed relief at the sudden quiet. But Jane said the silence bothered her—the kind of remark I’ve always heard her make. Then she said that as a young child she was always uneasy at home when it was too quiet—that those were the times when she worried about what her mother was up to. When Marie had been making noise, involved in noisy activities, Jane had felt much better, safer. 2. This insight led Jane to an obvious one neither of us had ever made before: that when she gets a letter in which the writer threatens suicide if Jane doesn’t help him or her, this is like Marie threatening the young Jane that she will commit suicide.)

The points Ruburt brought up immediately previous to my speaking involve connections made because the subconscious was responding, and trying to give you further information.

The public man, the man of letters, et cetera in other centuries, and the public man say of Rome, or of the Middle Ages, or of the 19th Century, involved personal interactions with the public, but in very limited, controlled situations. The private image of the person was largely unknown. A king could travel through his own lands and not be recognized if he wanted it that way, for no television screen flashed his image into the homes of his people. The line between the public and the private was much more clearly drawn. There is much more that could be said, but I simply here want to mention that such issues demand far more of a gifted personality.

This is the same person who on the other hand used to put up barriers of bookcases at one end of the living room to protect himself from any neighbors or miscellaneous callers; who objected when Mr. Gottlieb dared to cross into his private working area and glance at a paper. In the face of those fears, Ruburt did progress from someone who was afraid to read poetry to friends, to someone who ran an excellent class of nearly 50 people—all of the time denying that any fears existed. Not faced, the fears grew.

You felt that commercial art would work financially, because it belonged to the times, yet even then the comic book market, you felt, was falling beneath you as the public’s ideas changed, and (Mickey) Spillane’s comic strip fell beneath censure. You simply would not, later, curry the world’s favor with your paintings—even if, through hard work, financial success might follow. You did not trust people to know good work when you produced it.

Ruburt decided to brazen it through—to do his thing and be paid for it. At the same time Ruburt carried the fears mentioned. He hoped for the world’s approval, for he knew his work was good. On the other hand he carried the beliefs of this afternoon’s dream—that originality made a person instantly suspect, and that in the ordinary world, if you put yourself in the world’s eye its people would hunt you down. In opposition, he carried the belief that he should go on television, make tours, and so forth, and expose himself in direct opposition to those fears.

(Along in here I had an insight as I wrote, no doubt triggered by Seth’s material. It was that although Jane’s eye condition might be caused by my delays with getting “Unknown” Reality to the public, another reason was also involved: namely, that she saw the revealing notes I did for “Unknown” as a threat also.)

Because the fears were hidden, they could not be countered through, say, fresh experience that might show them to be at least exaggerated. They could not be reasoned with, and the unconscious was left holding the bag, so to speak.

The exaggerated fears carried threats not simply of scorn, but as you so clearly put it the other evening “Those people would burn us at the stake if they had the chance.” To save Ruburt from such possible assassination, the symptoms were not considered too strong a measure. But in the face of that kind of exaggerated threat they were considered very strict, but reasonable enough under the conditions. The subconscious was not too pleased with them.

(Jane was getting that “slightly sicky feeling in my stomach” as we talked about fears. I got her a glass of milk. “I’ll do what I can about the session,” she said. She was yawning again and again. I reminded her of my two questions from Monday’s session, plus the one about my reaction to the mail today. Seth didn’t go into the first two, but the following material did have to do with reactions to those who wrote us. Resume at 10:27.)

In a strange fashion because of his fears, now—and these particular fears can be countered with communications with the unconscious, and with understanding—he was afraid simply that so many people knew of his existence. To some extent that would have been involved no matter what field of endeavor he chose, if he became well-known.