“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(We were visited after supper this evening by Leonard Yaudes and Ann Kraky. As we waited for tonight’s session, Jane said she thought that Seth was organizing material about the four of us, our years together at 458 West Water St., and the flood of 1972—but that when we decided upon the questions listed above, Seth changed his tactics: he began to organize that material instead—“reorganizing what he’d already planned, in order to put it all together,” as Jane put it. She could feel the process. I suggested to Jane that she make some notes about the phenomenon.)

There are biological families. There are also all kinds of other groups which are not necessarily family substitutes, but different kinds of families. Social organizations, clubs, and other frameworks of course to some extent apply here, and supply for many people frameworks in which certain relationships can be encountered that are specific—limited in some ways, perhaps, to certain specific interests, and yet they give a sense of belonging.

All societies are different. The tenants at 458 at one time formed a kind of family, and to some extent that relationship continues, as far as the two of you are concerned, with Ann and Leonard. You remember past tenants together as people recall distant or dead family members. And in particular you chose the conditions of the flood and took part in a joint history.

To some extent you all have characteristics that are similar, while of course there are differences. In one way or another, however, you have not accepted the traditional social roles. Neither Ann or Leonard married. You married, but not at the usual age—later. You did not have children. Leonard and Ann also have a certain stubborn independence. When they look at your relationship with Ruburt they still assure themselves that it is after all not the traditional marriage.

I will at some time go into the reasons why all of you chose that house and the flood situation, for it fit into your joint and private purposes. The Walls were also involved. They served as house parents to some degree.

(10:16.) You had excelled, as he had, in all areas of that experience—as warriors, religious leaders, chieftains. In this life, therefore, you always felt sorry for those you felt could not achieve, and often held back your own abilities or criticisms for that reason.

All of that occurred in the background in which you chose an artistic ability that did not fit into the accepted male role, and Ruburt possessed a drive that did not fit the feminine picture, either. You quite concurred with the attitudes involved. Each of you dislike fanatics because you were once so fanatical. Ruburt went to battle with all of his men, and only as he grew older did he begin to wonder at his own motives, or the beliefs that were the structure of his life.

Ruburt’s condition in late years would fluctuate. You would use it, the two of you, as a measuring yardstick: if he began to improve considerably enough, particularly a few years ago, you would instantly, Joseph, become negative and guarded. Instead of being thankful when he began to go out again, you became frightened, and felt that everyone noticed his condition. After all, the two of you rode horses at the head of the pack.

(10:40.) Give us a moment.... Partially it was the belief that women were more vulnerable, and the social conditions—Darwinian and Freudian concepts—that led him to accept that position, and all the material I have given fits in here. There was also the feeling that contemplation and action were self-contradictory.

In that life women were expected to be decorative, and most of all compliant, so in his relationship to you, when Ruburt felt decorative or compliant, he felt you would have no use for him. You each decided to have no children— you, of course, as well as Ruburt. Your children are the people you influence, help, and guide.

Above all, neither of you wanted the condition to worsen. That is where you drew the line. No condition is stable, but ever-changing. The entire system of beliefs was based upon, again, fear of the spontaneous self on both of your parts—fear that it would lead you where you did not want to go, as if you and it were separate things, or as if its intents were by nature so divorced from your own that you must set up barriers against its expression except in certain acceptable areas.