“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

It might be a good idea to examine that statement, for in the truest sense of human motivation, the fact is that despite all appearances to the contrary, the imagination and the will are never in conflict.

There is nothing “wrong” with poverty, or morally reprehensible. But people who write you, for example, saying “I want to make good money, but all my jobs are innocuous, or I have none,” are not facing the fact that for the time being, at least, they want poverty.

The imagination usually gives you a pretty good picture of what you really want. It usually escapes all of your attempts to cow it, to reason away its pictures. It is a mirror of your wants, and it is also the mirror of your will — for in it you see what you want to see, even if afterward you say that its pictures are unbidden, or against your conscious intent.

(9:53.) All of my comments for Ruburt apply to the specific situation at the time they are given—an important point. Lately Ruburt decided, using his will, to walk to whatever degree possible. That desire was clear-cut. Immediately, without trying, at different times his imagination came up with different pictures to implement the desire—the table, the cupboard.

Give us a moment.... Again, you have a joint reality, in all aspects. Apply what I said about wealth to health. The creative abilities are always released when the will and the imagination are together, in whatever area.

Your willingness to help Ruburt walk, your encouragement—these are all important, but the most important issue is the unity, in practical terms, of imagination and will, and the generation of creative ability in health terms, that can be sparked.

It is in its way perfectly all right to be frightened of the world. (Almost with a laugh:) Under certain conditions it may be a mark of sanity—but it is highly self-defeating to put yourself in a position where you cannot go out into the world—or more importantly, where you cannot navigate as a creature.

(“Do you want to say something about the Voice?” In a rather funny confrontation, Seth and I stared at each other for a few moments. My question of course grew out of the first installment of the story about us and Seth that was published earlier this week in the Village Voice. Our feelings about it ranged all the way from ridicule to a grudging understanding that Jim Poett had worked hard on the piece. We think the pictures are especially bad, yet could see why the Voice had chosen the ones they did.

(I suppose the two-part article marks the end of our involvement with the media, though this opinion may change. Not likely, though. We’re left feeling that it’s largely a waste of time, and fraught with a lack of understanding. It’s practically impossible, for example, to get free of the connotations of the worst elements of the whole field: the moment the subject comes up, we’re associated with all the history of mediumship in the most banal of terms. This fact is indicative of both Poett’s own inexperience, and the way association works generally. To have Jane’s work studied and respected for what it is, on its own, is evidently asking the impossible of most people. It appears that intuitively at least Jane has made the right decision, to concentrate upon the books; at least they offer something the way she wants it to be. Unfortunately, I suppose, this also means that we set ourselves outside the mainstream of activity in the field, and that our readership is likely to be pretty much confined to the “average” individual. The “authorities” aren’t going to pay any attention.)

(10:10.) Give us a moment.... The Voice has artistic pretensions. It is read by the “professional” nonconformists. To read it is a badge of individuality in the city. It is sardonic, coolly critical, hip, righteous for the underdog, and with all of this a carrier now and then for new ideas of format for initiators. It is intellectual, yet carries the underlaying thrust of emotional hope—the distorted voice of the beleaguered, weary, ironic idealists.

This means of course that deeply felt hope must be sardonically examined, that deeply buried faith must be stated with parried thrusts, and to that extent the paper speaks for a concentrated portion of your population so that our Jim Poett, who is a poet at heart, must appear in the slightly worn cloak of the skeptic. He must show that for all of his youth he is world-weary, not easily taken in, that he is objective—and only then can he allow his creative abilities to flow.

But he must dress his dreams in fashionable cynicism, while all the time trying to hold them safely clear, and gracefully allow some faith, some hope, to show in an uncontested manner.