“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Ideas of authority as represented by Ed were obviously involved. Jane actually reacted better to some of the things he said than I did, to her credit, but I’m sure we can do much better. Half the problem is that we don’t see the people often enough to begin with. Even after all this time, then, we can still be caught unprepared.

(In connection with all of this, I came across the deleted session for December 18, 1974 while looking for something else yesterday. It fit in so well with the visit last Friday evening, concerning authority versus our interests, that I asked if Seth would comment on both the visit and that four-year-old session this evening.)

Now: you should reread Ruburt’s library material in the Cézanne book, on authority and creativity, for it is excellent.

Authority, generally speaking, is necessary for society’s survival—but it does not exist of itself. Authority is always vested in a person, organization, or whatever, by other people for a variety of reasons. But overall authority is meant to insure continuity, the status quo. It will always be “undermined” by creativity, and the search for another, newer version of reality.

You both grew up under certain authorities—the personal authority of the parents, and the greater authority—or Ruburt at least—of the church and state. For you, the church had little authority, but the state is vested with authority that must uphold the composite idea of reality generally held.

That particular authority of state, community, government, is a conglomeration of religious, scientific, and cultural opinions that are taken more or less as fact. Around them are grouped the universities and academies, the social organizations, down to the PTA or the Lion’s Club.

In a manner of speaking, the stability of that authority, however misguided, provided a relatively safe framework in which you could both grow into maturity. Many new versions of reality appear first in art or fiction, and in such a way new ideas are spread through a society, while no threatening advances are made upon the world of fact. In any society, as young people come to maturity, they begin to weigh their individualistic version of reality against the adult authoritative one, and in one way or another, as they attain adulthood, they change the system to whatever degree.

The authoritative world offers security and a certain amount of safety even in the spreading of new ideas, provided they remain in the artistic realm. Most people settle for following authority—particularly in the professional aspects of their lives, the community affiliations, and so forth, while here and there insisting upon a kind of private creativity that does not threaten the larger beliefs of the structure.

Academic people do like structures, and to some extent mass learning experiences of course require them. At certain times universities are avant-garde, and in other periods of history they are instead highly conservative. Contacts with so-called authorities are good for both of you, so that you can see that such authorities are simply people. You expect more of them than you do others, because you are still blinded by the ideas of authority.

You can best help in such situations by treating each person as an individual. Do not expect too much. To expect too much is to grant authority a basic authority that it does not possess.

Ruburt dislikes authority. He lived under the authority of Welfare, as well as the church. That dislike was to serve as an impetus, as it did, but the adult should see—the adult Ruburt—that there is no authority in those terms. There is nothing to fight in those terms. The authorities are simply people doing their best to preserve a status quo—with which many are already dissatisfied. Their authority becomes a trap for them, for to preserve it they must keep themselves in ignorance.

(10:10.) The dissenting factions in your own country are quite healthy, for they are held together by a string of authority that loops and unloops, yet is flexible enough so that many completely contrary ideas can dangle side by side.

Religious authority, when completely exercised, can be disastrous, for it sets up an unyielding set of principles as absolute truth, and any dissension is considered dangerous. (Amused:) With my nearly forgotten experience as a minor pope, I can say I would trust a crooked politician far better than a holy but fanatic religious leader.

In the deepest of terms, each person must be his or her own authority, and equally respect but not bow down to, the same innate psychic authority within each other living individual. That should be the basis for your democracy.

Now in our sessions I must unfortunately try to explain the greater aspects of reality in terms of a Framework 1 culture, with its psychic conventions. I must go against the authority, not only of the so-called straight system, but against the authority of the conventionalized occult in its multitudinous variations.

In certain terms then, and following a given line of probabilities, in future lives you know the outcome of your work now, and you can also ask for advice from your future selves, who are very actively interested, since their reality is so involved with your own. If it were not for such facts, then again in certain terms these present sessions would not be held. Whenever you come into difficulties, it is because you are still relying upon Framework 1’s authority, in which normal cause and effect operates, in which problems are solved by exaggerating them, and in which magical changes or alterations are considered out of context to normal living. “Magical” changes happen all the time. Your very existence is proof of that, for it is a mystery to Framework 1’s understanding. Framework 1 looks to time, and particularly the past, as authority.

Ruburt’s condition can change overnight, in literally dazzling improvements, if only the “authority” of Framework 1 is forgotten—as it is so often in your creative lives.