“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.