“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Today we were visited —unannounced—by a young man named Jim Poett, who has been assigned to interview Jane for The Village Voice. We talked to him for at least a couple of hours. This wasn’t an interview: he is to call Jane in a couple of weeks about that procedure, after he’s read more of her work. Jane gave him our unlisted phone number. The Voice is a New York City newspaper.

(Jim Poett said that we would see the article before it’s printed, at our insistence; I’d find it strange indeed to cooperate with a venture that would end up taking us apart in ways we didn’t approve of. But Jane says she trusts him, and I’m willing to go along with her feelings on the matter.)

He did not want to be put in the position in which he felt he had to put his self-respect on the line. He did not like the public aspects that he felt confronted him. There was no ready fellowship in the psychic field, in which he felt he could take part. At the same time he felt that he should indeed go abroad—out into the public arena, and that he was cowardly for not doing so.

His fear of the spontaneous self originally developed simply because that self seemed so different from other people that he tried to keep it within bounds. He tried to tie it to writing alone, which was the closest approximation he could make to creative conventional activity, while still allowing himself expression. His own abilities, again, kept working through all of the frameworks, however, and none of them could content him.

If he were free of fear, it seemed to him, he would do so. Ruburt, however, deals well with individuals, as in class; while preserving his privacy he still extended it. He enjoyed radio, even on your tours, because he spoke from a concealed viewpoint, where his person was concealed. The secret elements of his personality rise up against the public connotations of standing before the crowd. This is not necessarily a fear, say, of performing inadequately, nor a fear of exposure in ordinary terms. It is a distaste for being surrounded by the public emotions.