“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane and I have been very upset over the holidays about her eye condition, and my chest disturbances. Both have been very worrisome. I even talked about seeing a doctor on both counts. Our original understanding was that the eye condition would pass rather quickly once Jane began to loosen up—but now it appears to be another fixed state in the general scheme of our lives. We’ve had a number of discussions about the whole business, and what we can do about any of it. I’m afraid we felt little to cheer about. We planned for a session last night but it didn’t develop.

This does not mean that they will not face consequences, but their self-approval provides a sturdy rudder that holds them often aloft, where most men might perhaps be drowning in the same circumstances. I have given you much information that apparently has not sunken through, and I have couched information in various ways. I have given suggestions for you to follow, many of them, and any of them followed with a sense of purpose —any one of them—would lead you in the proper direction.

Ruburt believes he should be a TV personality, a healer, a writer, an excellent psychic versed in all of the most esoteric traditions, a magnetic personality. He believes he should be objectively intellectual, cool and calm, and spontaneous at the same time. He should be in glowing health—glowing—and shine amid the multitude. A rather impossible task, that would make any individual feel quite inferior by contrast.

You expect yourself to be a great artist, lost in the intricacies of what you think of as an artistic emotional reality, innocent of any interfering intellectuality. You berate yourself on the one hand for an intellect that it seems to you separates you from immediate emotional contact with painting and with others. At the same time, of course, you would certainly berate a Van Gogh for his overly emotional behavior.

Your intellect operates beautifully in the notes and appendixes of “Unknown,” but instead of rejoicing in it, you wonder if your notes lack the very kind of emotionalism that would make that particular kind of clear intellectual objectivity most difficult. When you are writing you are pleased, finally at least, with the working of your mind—but angry that you are not painting. When you are painting you feel guilty not only because the painting does not bring in money—by now not that much of a concern, only a nagging accusation—but there also you haggle at your intellect. You wish for the intensified emotional preoccupation that would close your mind to all else but painting.

You have written the equivalent of your own book from a unique standpoint in “Unknown,” but neither of you have really been able to recognize that. Ruburt, being true to his spontaneity, would forget publishing details. It is his attempt to try and match your individual methods of thought that confuse him. He is producing his books and mine —a double kind of production that entails almost two publishing schedules.

He quite understands the overall creative triumph. It is only when he tries to become overly literal that he becomes overly concerned with time. He has also reacted to your own doubts and fears about the book, and has picked up often your own ambiguity in that regard. Had he really been so against the idea of the book being produced as it was, he would have said so indeed.