“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(As referred to in the last deleted session, Saturday evening we were visited for a half hour or so by Scott and Helen Nearing, who were participating in homesteading workshops at Mansfield State Teachers College for several days. They are very nice people. He is 95, she is 78. As Jane said, “Scott conserved his energy, but he seemed to do well enough, although his movements were slow, especially walking and sitting down. But he appeared to have the use of all his faculties. Helen was very agile. Scott Nearing was quite interested in how well the Seth books were doing, whether any of the “leading magazines” had interviewed Jane, and so forth. The reasons behind his interest are brought out in tonight’s session, and in Jane’s own brief summary of the visit in her notes.

(Odd notes: Today Jane received the contract for Emir from Delacorte, but is not about to sign it yet. She wants to talk it over with Tam. And Tam was interviewed today by Jim Poett who is still tracking down witnesses relative to the article he’s doing on Seth and us for the Village Voice. Tam is to call Jane following the interview, or if it’s too late Jane will call him Tuesday morning—which she did. She learned much about both the contract and the interview.

(She felt pretty relaxed by the time the movie was over, but wanted to have the session because she thought it would contain material on Scott Nearing.)

(I should note here that SN was evidently born in 1883, and that WJ died in 1910—which leaves a period of some 27 years during which their physical lives overlapped. So either Seth is in error here, or his words carry a symbolic meaning. But SN never met James, he told Jane in reply to her question.)

Your country, far more than others, has been a country of individualists, do-it-yourselfers—a country of enthusiasts—and of course some fanatics, but a country of pioneers in one fashion or another. As a young mean, Nearing, as he told you, was aware of spiritualism, and of those very aspects that were so explored by James, and he was fascinated. Spiritualism exists with such fervor in your country because Americans like the idea of a communication with the dead on an individual basis, minus the intervention of priests, and hence the pioneering spirit was early tuned to do-it-yourself séances and the like. Americans would explore the spiritual world as they pioneered the physical continent.

He became aware of the growing inequalities of government, and again saw in actuality the early industrial world perceived by James. But James was a gentleman by class, almost in European terms, and Nearing picked, say, the individualism of Whitman or even Thoreau over Emerson’s “inner independence.”

Nearing then wondered how democracy could operate, when—as he saw it then—capitalism kept the poor poor, and added to the gains of the wealthy. He grew sore with the worker’s plight, and felt that thoughts of art, spiritual merit, or pretensions were meaningless if men were ill-fed. Therefore, he turned his efforts to bettering his fellow man’s physical state. He butted his head against the government. In a fashion this involved old Christian principles, of course, as pure socialism does—so that a man shared his goods with his fellows, and all land belonged to the people, so that private property—in those terms—would not exist.

You make your own reality—and few people are trying to understand that principle as you are. This involves a learning process—a whole new orientation, not only of thought but of feeling, and necessitates a different kind of emotional reality.

Ruburt’s motions—some of them—have quickened since last week, in walking. It was an excellent idea “not to hide” when company comes—but any remarks should be made as statements of facts, simply and quietly, and not as apologies. The ideas of shame are simply new versions of old religious concepts, or of scientific ones: if there is something physically wrong with you, it is either a sign of inner sin or of incompetency in terms of survival of the fittest. Neither concept has anything to do with the basic merit of a personality.