“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Friday evening Jane and I were visited by a psychologist [Ed Ostrander] from Cornell, after an exchange of letters over a period of several months. I’m afraid that the encounter was typical of others we’ve had with the members of academia, and once again we were rather taken by surprise. It wasn’t until the next day that we realized the visit had upset us more than we knew, because of the various connotations aroused. Although we liked him personally, we came to understand that he used words as a barrier to any real communication, asked Jane few questions. At the same time he thought himself liberal-minded, he repeatedly couched Seth’s ideas in the terms used by the respected, well-known members of his profession. He told us often that while he liked a good idea “no matter where it came from,” he wouldn’t use Seth’s name in conversations with others, but would try to work in Seth’s ideas under the guise of others’ works. Jane and I were slow: we didn’t realize that such thinking should have been challenged by us on the spot. Instead, we passively let it go by.

(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.

Your friend—Professor “Crazies”—thought himself on the one hand very avant-garde to come here, and on the other he felt the need to protect himself, to maintain the stance of a professor. You should indeed have spoken more freely, but you also should have seen him simply as an individual, and not as a symbol of a school, or a structure, or as a scientist.

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.