“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Some of the reasons for such activities are sketched in our new book. But what you have is a learned pattern of face-saving self-deception and nefarious (with amusement) techniques, taught by parents to children; so often you pretend to want one thing, and you may say that you “will it” to happen—perhaps because what you really want is unacceptable, or so you have been taught: it is demeaning, or evil, or whatever. So in many cases people’s true motives “escape” them.

That is enough for now. When we return to our ordinary schedule I will more than keep you busy—but the unknown reality applies in such cases, so that unknown motives can become known and dealt with.

Ruburt does not need to feel that he would naturally, left alone, go out into the world, into the arena, and convince the world of our ideas, or think that with his energy unimpeded that would be part of his natural mission. That is not so. Nor would he be necessarily more fulfilled in that role, and it is that imagined, frightening role against which he pushes, and then retreats.

(“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.)

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.