“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(At 10 PM I asked Jane if she felt like having a session. We’d been visited today by Loren, Betts and Doug, and Dick, Ida and David, and at times my left groin area had bothered me considerably. Now after everyone had gone—Dick and family stayed until about 8 PM—I felt poorly indeed. As I had last spring, I didn’t know whether my symptoms of unease were physical or mental, and was very concerned. I thought of a hernia—and Loren had been operated on for a hernia this summer—yet I suspected the unease was basically mental. This had been the case last spring. And now, those feelings had returned. Try as I might, I couldn’t find the proper adjective to describe the groin sensations; they weren’t ones of pain—but what?

(Today as the family members talked and took photographs and watched television and ate. and so forth, I felt the discomfort in the left groin sweep over me in waves. Twice I went off to use the pendulum. Each time it helped, temporarily. I thought of asking Jane for help, but disliked doing so because I could see that she was doing very well. I didn’t want to introduce negative elements into the day, especially so since her performance was much better than it had been last year when everyone had gotten together. [After that gathering she’s had strong upsets of her own.]

(When I mentioned a session to Jane finally she said she didn’t really feel like it; she was getting relaxed, “really out of it,” and I could tell she’d rather not do it. I went for a walk, which helped. When I returned home the sensations did also. Then as I sat making notes, Jane called in to me that she felt better, that she’d try a session after all. So:)

(11:19.) Such communities have few poets, few artists, and fewer mediums. Tunkhannock is actually an idealized version of that kind of community. In those terms (underlined) it is for Loren a step up from, say, Sayre, whose history is richer even in “lower class” origins. Sayre, however, generally now, represented the poorer man’s version of that American ideal, and it was from there that many of your beliefs and those of your brothers had their origins.

It is as ridiculous to prove your worth by working in a conventional sense as it is to prove your worth by not working in a conventional sense. Americans have had a fine and often understandable disdain for what was thought of as the European gentleman, or even the literary gentleman, or the man who somehow or other did not have to “rub elbows with the masses.”

(Quietly amused:) Now, with that simple explanation, when you know your brothers will visit, you instantly leap to the old beliefs of childhood, when your mother wanted you to set an example—which meant be someone in society, in normal middle-class society, now. Use your art to make money. Otherwise it was a liability in her eyes. She expected a clearly defined role. Now, she being uniquely herself, is more than pleased with your situation: a good house in a fine neighborhood, and who cares where the money comes from (with more than a little humor)?

Your body, on its own, is very happy to be so well provided for (more humor). Ruburt said that he used to like his class money because it was tangible, and you understood. But you also told him that the money for books, that came in a check, was just as good, and that there was more of it.

When your art was commercial you could say, again, you were working. When you paint, you feel you cannot justify your art, and in our books you wonder what percentage your notes and contributions might make in the overall royalties, say.

I want to rid you of any lingering misconceptions, but you still have a lingering belief that your old ideas about money and the male have some kind of high moral value. (Louder:) The Protestants have always thought that artists were decadent, that contemplation was dangerous, and that leisure was a crime. (With continuing amusement:) To enjoy your work was suspect—and if you enjoy unconventionality of mind, some leisure in which to contemplate the world about you, then it is about time that you dismissed such parochial concepts, and realized that there is no moral rectitude given them.

You should do a book of your own if you want to, because you want to —not because of the money that might be involved. Some part of you still thinks there is something wrong with money unless you can show precisely where it came from—or people might think you a crook, or a gigolo living off your wife. You must learn to dismiss such ideas as the rubbish that they are. Your body is in the right place at the right time—and (louder) I can see that I was in the right place at the right time for our chat.

(12:13 AM. I felt better already. “Boy,” Jane said, “if you’d told me I could have had that session after they all left, I wouldn’t have believed it. I was exhausted. I felt selfish, too. I just wanted to watch the television program [Upstairs, Downstairs], but when that was done I felt better, and I knew you needed the help....” Her delivery had been animated and fast throughout the session, with many indications of wit and amusement.

(“The only thing I might have asked,” I said, after having had a few moments to think it over, “was why I would choose to pick on myself here.” I pointed to my left groin. “I know that in those earlier sessions Seth said I equated the left side with the unconscious portions of the personality and the masculine role in society [see the deleted sessions for April 4 and 16, 1979], but—”

(Jane paused, still in trance. I expected her to end the session, but as she sat there I saw that it was one of those times when she—or Seth—could say more. I was surprised, considering her feelings before the session. Then:)

They scorned all decoration, and considered art sinful. Poverty was worthy, and proof of morality. In your country, this was coupled, however, with the growth of economic individualism, Darwinism, and so forth.

Though men could compete for a livelihood, wealth itself was and still is highly suspect. Even a wealthy man, in the light of those beliefs, dabbles in art —dabbles—justifying any love of art as a good investment.

(12:31 PM. Something had really turned Jane on after all. Seth was still around, she told me. “But now what I’ll have is a little milk, a cookie, and a cigarette—and go to bed,” she laughed. Her energy was still up. Even sitting in bed, she remarked that she was picking up more of that generalized material from Seth.

(“I started to get some material from Seth right after breakfast. I felt as if it were being gently inserted into my mind and that for some reason I became aware of it. It’s as if this often happens, material being inserted and then “stacked up” or stored there for, say, the next session. For a few minutes, five or more, I was aware of quite a bit of material on work, and the Protestant mainstream [as separate from, say, Emerson or James or Thoreau, even]. Thought I’d write it down and told Rob some of it. Now though, I just remember the subject matter more or less; now I’m not even sure of that [and it’s only about ten minutes after I told Rob what I’d picked up].

(“It’s vague now: Americans not trusting creative thought unless it applies specifically to practical considerations.... nothing new there; I guess I’ve just forgotten it.... There was the idea that true creative work is the springboard for the more usual kind.... and something about vocations being distrusted in this country....

(“Twenty minutes later I’m sitting at the front living room table, feeling relaxy and good about things, when I catch an odd brief but lovely experience; something happened momentarily; I felt as if I was seeing with all of me, instead of just with my eyes.... as if my molecules almost saw what I saw too in their own fashion. Physically my vision was the same, I think.... but there was a fuller visual appreciation or fullness difficult to verbalize....”

(One final note: At the beginning of this session I wrote that I had trouble describing the very uncomfortable sensation in my left groin—that it wasn’t pain. but what? I felt much better by the end of the session; remarkably so, so Seth’s material was on the mark. Then in the bathroom it came to me as we prepared to retire: the feeling in the groin was like a knot—and my realization had been triggered by Seth’s remark about tension I had created in that area. In a flash the understanding led me to a very obvious conclusion that, it seems I should have reached on my own earlier: the knotty feeling was very much like the muscle spasms I’d experienced in the back, years ago when we’d lived on West Water St. These had been so bad that I’d lost months of work; the sessions had begun as Jane tried to help me, as well as for her own needs, in 1963.