“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

To some extent, he tried to emulate their behavior—that is, to behave the way they did, while at the same time he intently pursued a rather adventuresome inner psychic existence. That existence was expressed in the personality, but not in the normal conversation with the boys he dated, or with his friends. In early years, the church did serve as a structure. When he left it, however, he was without such a structure, and when he did discuss such matters with the priests, they often had more pragmatic sexual interests in mind.

A good deal of the time, he hid his own decisions from himself. His nature is open—basically trustful, and direct in its dealings with the world and others. He began to find, of course, that the world could react quite differently to openness and trust. He has great powers of concentration, as indeed all mystics do, and everything in his environment becomes charged and important.

(9:35.) Give us a moment.... If you recall, Ruburt could chatter quite well, and carry on in a more or less normal manner while brooding deeply about something, and saying nothing. He was bound to publish his work—any kind—but equally determined to protect his private nature. The secretness meant that he could hide his intent from himself for some time. Most people, as I mentioned, experience their contacts with the world through many prepared structures—that of church, community, clubs, professional organizations, family affiliations, academic affiliations—and these frameworks serve automatically to cushion such contact, and in a way, while permitting contact with the world, also blunting it to some extent. In that respect, most individuals do not stand alone, and, in that respect Ruburt feels that except for you he does, and must meet the world “head-on” when there is such conflict.

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.

Now: in a way the mystic’s goals are eternal—that is, they involve comprehensions sought for whose validity is in important ways independent of historical time, even though the comprehensions may be couched in certain frameworks.

In other periods, for example, there were acceptable frameworks through which mystics expressed themselves, and most cultures have such avenues. In times of transition the old avenues no longer serve. Ruburt has no exterior framework to judge his subjective experience against, for even when he was in the church his experience did not fit the mold.