“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I explained to her, as we waited for the session to begin, my dilemma about Note 6 for Appendix 22—my feeling of time wasted after I’d spent a couple of days writing it very carefully—only to have it fall apart at the last moment because I’d forgotten to deal with one crucial point. I found my evident lack of skill at planning quite depressing. See Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality.

(Today Jane has had a steady barrage of bodily sensations of incipient release and change—her most active and encouraging one so far, since we began our program on April 3, 1978. Today was also one of her most uncomfortable, however, due to the muscular soreness involved as little-used muscles in her trunk began to act. At the same time, her knees are much looser. However, we’ve learned by now to have the confidence that by tomorrow, say, the soreness in her shoulders and arms will have lessened, and that another part of the body will begin loosening itself.

(I hadn’t had time to buy Jane’s birthday presents, although we both know what she wants—hot plate for the kitchen, and a summer bed spread. We’ve had a succession of visitors, all but one of them unannounced, and have lost work time as a result. Saturday, for example, I wasn’t able to get out of the house to go food shopping.)

(Today, even though she was so uncomfortable, Jane was still standing taller than she has done for a long time.)

In that respect they are grassroot, coming from the people themselves. Those people interpret our books from their own levels. They regard the books as their discoveries. They buy the books for friends and relatives. They try to pass on the ideas to parents or children, and to interpret them through home life, and through areas of work and community. They invest time and enthusiasm—and that kind of grassroot development is in the long run more apt to change the beliefs of a society than any authoritative dictums from the specialists, whatever their field. You are reaching tomorrow’s “authorities.”

Your original purpose was the purpose of the creative artist or of the mystic, and that kind of purpose automatically brings you in rebellion against official authority. Your original purpose did not involve gaining the respect of those authorities, and it is, if you will forgive me, overall shortsighted to worry about the approval of such people in your time. It can make you bitter for no reason, for this kind of creative work exists outside of its time, and will still be read when the old authorities no longer exist, in your terms.

I am closing the session early. And (whispering) in the time left over, I would like Ruburt to soak his knees.

(Recently Jane was told that a complete set of class tapes, with transcripts was being offered by someone on the West Coast for around $255.00 for 55 of them—$5.00 or thereabouts a tape. During a call to Tam this morning, he advised Jane to “put a stop” to the affair before it went too far—to at least write the people involved a letter. Jane has asked Sheri Perl for the names and addresses to do this, and plans to write a letter. We think the quality of the tapes must be very poor. There’s also copyright infringement, since some of the class sessions have been published. Jane is against the whole thing on esthetic and invasion-of-privacy grounds, not monetary ones so much, and I guess my feelings about it all are too ambiguous. At the same time, it all sounds familiar, as if we heard about someone doing the same thing last year, say.