“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I should note here that last Friday evening we were visited by the Gallaghers and Sue Watkins. As the evening progressed we became involved in some pretty heated and involved discussions about Three Mile Island, man’s greed for money, his basic good intent, and related issues. Bill and Sue especially got going pretty good, and Peggy said she didn’t like that. I think I made some good points; even Bill said he probably exaggerated man’s greed, yet he wasn’t about to change his views. Sue was upset. Jane was too, yet tried to take it all in. I probably spoke more frankly than I had in the past, yet was oddly unbothered by it all.

(Then while doing the dishes before this evening’s session, Jane said she “got” that Friday night was the “playout” of my dreams involving Bill Gallagher and Sue, which had taken place separately. The playout wasn’t literal, Jane said, “So I don’t think most people would have made the connections. But I picked up that Seth would go into those dreams tonight, and I asked that he give the best information that he could.”

(I’d temporarily forgotten the dreams about Bill and Sue, although I have them selected for inclusion in Through My Eyes; they’re on file in that notebook. The one with Bill took place on March 29, 1979. Sue on March 31, 1979. This was a period in which I had a series of potent dreams that Jane has done a lot of work interpreting [including my famous dog dream of March 31, 1979], and which could easily make up several chapters in a book on the subject, if we had the time to produce it. These dreams have been operating as a series, as Jane has pointed out, which increases the value of a person’s dreams in unexpected ways. I think some original ideas are embodied here. Jane has interpreted the Bill and Sue dreams, and Seth has commented on them also. See the 845th session. All of Seth’s dream material has been excellent, by the way.

In the dream (of March 29) Bill Gallagher offers to take you out to dinner, and you say you have good food at home. Here the word “food” refers to nourishment. He offers the nourishment of the world—but the world as he perceives it, and instead you prefer your private nourishment. Bill Gallagher sees a dog-eat-dog world, and, as mentioned earlier, animals have an entirely different meaning to Bill.

The evening found you in a clash of ideas, as Bill painted the world through the most pessimistic of eyes. He saw man’s greed for money everywhere predominate. The rest of you to varying extents objected, because he portrayed so clearly the darkest of your own fears and imaginings in exaggerated fashion.

Now: Bill Gallagher, with his beliefs about that world, in his mind joined it. He felt that he betrayed himself, that he performed acts that he should not perform in order to fit into its context, and he felt that he must do so in order to survive.

You were astonished when Ruburt told you how much money the Gallaghers were making, for if Bill sold his soul, few it seems could have sold it for less. Bill, however, concentrated upon life’s regrettable elements, upon the impediments, the dishonesties and so forth, until it seemed that even if he followed the world’s way he could not succeed. His idea of manliness was such that he insisted upon a conventional job, clear-cut.

As the evening progressed Sue Watkins became more and more upset, as Bill pointed out the toll that society demanded, the impossible stakes and the penalties that must be paid. Bill feels that his business productive life is coming to an end, when he will retire. He spoke of the values that existed when he was young in the world, that now are gone. With all of that as background, then look back to the time clock you found, hidden in your dream in a closet.

The ideas of age bring this kind of thing into focus. They make Bill Gallagher for example more bitter about his life, for he feels cheated of the rewards when he followed the system. Conventional ideas of age, however, can limit your own ideas of your own creativity. You start thinking “How much time is available?” when the very creative thoughts themselves make more time available.

Now: beside other reasons, the taxes serve as a focal point, because you feel you must pay tribute to the world that is described by Bill Gallagher—and in that world you feel you have no specific (underlined) conventional role, as earlier mentioned.

(Seth’s reference to a letter to a congressman came about, I think, because during our conversation on Friday night Bill Gallagher said that no one present had done anything to protest the conditions in our world that we didn’t like—forgetting, of course, that the books themselves are full of protests, and of suggestions for the better. But Bill doesn’t read the books, and to that extent lives in a world closed off from such ideas.)