“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.

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.

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.

Fellowship is important even to the animals, and your species is highly social. To be ostracized, for example, is no small matter. That is why individuals with ideas counter to the system band together in groups of all kinds, whether or not their particular ideas happen to agree with the group with whom they become affiliated. At least they are not alone. Often they form their own small authoritative structure. Within it certain ideas predominate that are taboo outside.

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.

(9:52.) Now when you freely communicate ideas that are threatening or frightening, or even strange, to some extent you are attacking the heart of the authoritative structure. You are telling it to change, when all of its instincts, you see, are to maintain stability, and in your country, at least, that stability has been large enough and flexible enough so that you are being financially rewarded, to whatever degree, for promoting ideas that run counter to the deepest beliefs of that system.

When this happens, you become part of a creative surge. Enough people are interested, or the books would not be read, so emotion grows. Many of those people, however, in say businesses or professions, would automatically try to grasp the new ideas with one hand, while protecting themselves from any consequences with the other: “I know these ideas seem crazy, but -” or, in the case of your professor, “I collect my crazies, but those people are authentic.”

Again, that library material fits in excellently here. The ideas that we are promoting would indeed change your society—and to some extent they are—for they are altering your readers’ ideas about reality, and challenging the concepts of science, religion, and to a lesser degree, of government itself.

Again, you both intended this. You knew it would be difficult. You began before our sessions even, in your private lives before you met. Many individuals come into a world for the purpose of changing it for the better, and there is no more efficient way of doing that than by the promotion of ideas—for no exterior altered circumstances can ever be applied from without unless the inner foundations have been laid.

You are in your ways conscientious persons. You would have ordinarily returned your stock to the earth in terms of children, and yet instead decided upon bringing forth a new birth of ideas, so that your extended family is the family of your readership. Those readers teach their children, and so you help create a new mental and psychic atmosphere that in physical terms will long outlast this life.

(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.

The Atlanteans, so-called for example, are supposed to be coming back now. All concepts and ideas in the first place, referring to a continuous forward progression of time distort all reincarnational experiences as a rule. It is almost impossible to describe some of what I know. Simple facts to me sometimes appear quite clearly in the material I give you—but then I perceive that the particular information escapes you completely. I can say that I traveled in Rome at about the time of Christ. To me there is no contradiction between that statement and the statement that the reality of that Rome is even now being affected by present, current concepts and beliefs. The past changes, even as in your terms, say, a river does—only the changes go out in all directions. Atlantis is as real as tomorrow is—and that is a loaded statement.