“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now, to some extent, in pragmatic terms, you must look at your backgrounds. Your father greatly distrusted the public and public events. When his battery shop closed and the public turned to the new inventions, that made his livelihood passe. He disliked the public from that moment on, and felt resentful toward those whose pictures he took, that his livelihood would be at the expense of their favor.

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.

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.

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.