“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(After supper I asked Jane if she’d hold a private session for me, since I felt so bad. On Saturday, October 27, I’d evidently come down with a “bug” of some kind —whether physical or psychological, and haven’t felt good at all since. At first I’d thought I was going into a beneficial relaxation episode like that I’d experienced on April 23, 1979. We’d been working hard, and when I lay down for a nap Saturday afternoon I felt relaxation effects. “Thank God for relaxation,” I told myself again and again as I fell asleep, hoping the effects would rejuvenate me. But I ended up with the cold chills, and for the next week was in often severe pain in the joints and muscles. We’d seen recent notices on TV of a local bug going around, but I didn’t know if that was involved or not. The worst part of the whole thing was that I developed urinary difficulties during the malaise: urination became very painful indeed, and I had a strong sense of blockage and impairment at times. I always managed to “go,” but it often took a while, and was very uncomfortable.

(We missed last week’s sessions, of course, and last night’s as well. even though Jane suggested one. My strength was coming back by now, but yet I was too down or disgusted with myself to accent help: that may be the most honest way to put it. The urinary problem still plagued me no end, and tonight the pressure was heavy; hence, I gave in and asked Jane for help.

(All during this time, October–November, we’ve also been involved in a series of hassles with the foreign publishers Ankh-Hermes and Ariston. We’ve learned to our sorrow and rage that both entities have cut their versions of Seth Speaks, without our permission or knowledge, and have struggled to exert what force we could in order to rectify the situation. I thought it much more likely that these sorts of challenges were much more likely to be behind my problems. We do feel let down on the issue of foreign rights by Prentice-Hall, and the overseas publishers as well. As I’ve said to Jane more than once, “I wonder what we ought to know that Tam hasn’t told us”—meaning of course that every time a hassle develops with Prentice-Hall we find out a new batch of information that Tam has known all along but never relayed to us. This makes for a series of ugly surprises along the way of our travels with Prentice-Hall, since they always seem to involve money in a negative way, or royalties being withheld, etc.

(We’ve lost the old sense of freedom we had with Prentice-Hall, where we can just do our work, ship it to them, and expect it to be well handled, with royalties paid every so often and a trust both felt and expressed between the two sides. Now we’ve become suspicious of everything they tell us. Jane still has on hand the contracts for Mass Events and God of Jane waiting for these to be straightened out: amended with Tam’s promised “superamendment” that’s supposed to protect us in the rights departments, paperback covers, and all the rest; jacket copy, etc. Prentice-Hall even wanted to have Jane sign contracts giving them the right to take money from Mass Events to pay for God of Jane. I sometimes have the feeling that we’re little more than ciphers to them. I for one am in favor of taking a stand, as Jane well knows, but as I’ve told her, I don’t expect her to go along. I think she’d be too terrified to be without a publisher, if it came to that, whereas my fighting blood is aroused and I’d be perfectly willing to let the chips fall where they may.

(All of this material is on file in detail. Yesterday Jane confirmed with Tam by phone that we will take full control of foreign rights; not to try to make a lot of money, because we don’t think it can be done, but simply to prevent our being taken advantage of by any more foreign publishers. In all probability taking control of foreign rights merely means that there won’t be any. I’ve already written Ariston that we will sell them no more work after their dishonesty with Seth Speaks, and plan to do the same thing soon with Ankh-Hermes. At the moment we’re waiting to learn their reaction to correspondence from Prentice-Hall, demanding that the cut portions of the book be restored—a move I cannot see them complying with for economic reasons alone.

(The little I’ve worked with the pendulum tells me my troubles are rooted in money attitudes, as well as the production time I’ve lost on Mass Events for the last two weeks and more. I thought I was doing something by working hard on that book, to get it underway in an organized fashion, I told Jane as we sat for the session—so what happened? I added that I wouldn’t put up with the kind of hassles involving Prentice-Hall beyond a certain point—that I’d take some kind of drastic action in order to rid myself of the problems connected with dealing with someone I no longer respect. This would involve holding the sessions, but letting Jane herself do any work about producing books for the market. I would go back to painting, try to sell some, and possibly end up with a part-time job for ready money—anything to break the vicious mental pattern of distrust I seem to keep creating. I believe that Jane at last understands that I’m quite capable of reacting that way, that I would refuse to indefinitely put up with our present kind of hassles with Prentice-Hall, or any other entity. I explained that I had such thoughts when we moved to Pinnacle Road, and could easily revive them and try a different kind of life.

(I might add that on the telephone with Tam the day before yesterday I really lit into Tam—rather to his surprise, I think. But I was determined that he understand our feelings—or mine, at least, in no uncertain terms, for as we talked I could feel him start using words to paper over our upset about foreign rights; I felt that his tactics would only make it possible for the whole thing to happen again with succeeding books, and that I was going to short-circuit at once. I believe my reactions, which were loud and clear, paid off, for Tam called Jane yesterday to find out, in his own way, whether I was mad at him personally. Jane said I wasn’t, of course—but of course I was.

Of course, you rebelled against such feelings and beliefs, but you did not rid yourself of them. You remembered being in Florida—the tempera episode —when you were supposed to be starting an enterprise with Crowder, and at that particular emotional level it seemed to you that you had made few inroads since —and again, you disapproved.

In a fashion you see your father as inventive, creative, and highly vulnerable. These ideas merge with conventional beliefs about age, so that it seems you must take stock. But when you take stock with the feelings we are describing as the emotional yardsticks, those feelings consider valid only the beliefs that go along with them—a traditional male role: the accumulation of money through traditional means—and they discount as legitimate the accumulation of knowledge or wisdom as a pursuit of life. Your mother would say “posh.”

Emotional shoddiness upsets you. When you become enraged at Prentice you are of course enraged against the larger defects of the world—but Prentice’s defects are the ones that come of course to your own more immediate attention.

(9:28.) Give us a moment.... The issue at Prentice, then, has been charged, not simply because of the errors made there, or abroad, but because of what those errors and stupidities represented to you—their symbolic content.

Now, of course they think of books as products, so it seems to you that they should think in terms of the best products, in the same way that you might think of a best painting—but when you think that way, you are still projecting artistic characteristics where they do not fit.

Most businesses, including Prentice, do not have that kind of vision. Period. As you have said yourself, the people simply want to get through their day’s job as quickly and as easily as possible. This does not mean they do not take some pride in their work, but that pride is in direct proportion to the poverty of their vision—so the vision must be yours and Ruburt’s. You make such people feel put-upon, bewildered. They do not know what you mean, if you approach them in such a fashion.

There was no ill intent on the part of the Dutch publisher, or the German. They wanted the books to start with because they did indeed respond to the books’ vision—but the versions they came out with represented the gap between what they understood and what they could not understand.

Give us a moment.... Ruburt does not feel that you are amiss because you are not “making money on your own,” but he feels deeply your own discontent in that area, and he feels bewildered—for years ago you said so often that it would be great if you could just paint or write without worrying about money. He feels that you are highly dissatisfied. He would do anything that you wanted. You would do far better, however, to think of painting rather than a simple job, which would certainly seem like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

(9:47.) The idea of a simple job attracts you because it separates your ideas of art from money—but in order to content you it could not involve money at all, for even commercial art brings you to the matter of the artistic ideal and its practical presentation.

The male as breadwinner and the male as artist, or the title of the saga is “Bill Crowder may have been stupid, but he fit in with the crowd.”

Give us a moment.... You must realize that I make considerable effort to understand your social mores, and your reactions to them even while I try to clear your minds of them. Much of this, then, is crystal clear to me, but do not put yourselves down because of their effects upon you, I do not have them to contend with.

First of all, you understand my message in theoretical terms, but then of course all of that must dribble down into your lives until it becomes more and more practical.

His understanding is growing by leaps and bounds, but it is highly important that you both get back to what you think of as important—your work, which should also be your play, and also to your love-making. And in that area, you should also forget any idea of sex roles in conventional terms.