“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The ideal may be specific, then, or ill-defined, and man’s idea of “the good” varies considerably. The better you can define your idea of the ideal, the better off you are, for it—the definition—at least clears your own mind, and suggests lines of action too. “The best” idealist is a practical one—someone who realizes that most men like to work with specifics. Many might shy away from any philosophical discussions concerning the nature of “the good,” but many would also understand and appreciate the meaning of the word “better,” when applied to any situation.

In the matter of publishing, or selling paintings, others are involved—others who very rarely in their lives experience that important encounter between, say, the self as actualized and the idealized sensed self, between the painting or the poem as an ideal and the actualization of that ideal. You cannot give such people a general impression of what you want. If you are concerned with such matters as covers that do not live up to your ideals of what covers should be, then you must begin your definitions. Ruburt has primarily been concerned with the ideal that is behind all of his books, and with the practical matter of getting those out into the world. (Pause.) He was willing to put up with a good deal to do so, to overlook lacks of taste in presentation, say.

Ruburt’s father always planned to make a new will before his death, and kept putting it off. In the dream Ruburt finds a strange mechanism made by his father that is supposed to dispense some money. A kindly old man appears, who says that Ruburt’s father made this contraption two hours before his death, to ensure Ruburt some inheritance.

Ruburt suspects this man of helping himself in somewhat the same manner, in the meantime. In any case, the mechanism deposits a few coins or so. There is a missing key, and the old man also possesses one to the mechanism, which he finally gives to Ruburt, who then operates it. The odd mechanism represents the mechanics of the law, which his father used poorly, and in fact he died before he had time to make the contraption mentioned in the dream.

Pat was chosen symbolically, yet stands for a definite situation, when you two visited Boston on tour. At that time, Ruburt saw Pat, who is a teacher, and was traveling through belief systems with the greatest of ease, converting to Judaism and then out of it, and so forth. I spoke on television, and you were both appalled at the gulf between what you saw as the idealized message of our work, and the ludicrous (pause) lack of integrity of the environment in which that ideal was expressed. I am referring to the other performer, et cetera—the circumstances which you know well.