“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Stuart was 23 years old—half-inarticulate, dirty, downcast—seemingly a pathetic case. Like some others we’ve seen, he was so locked into his reality that he was really quite unreachable. He lived off a government social-security supplemental program for those who can’t fend for themselves—pretty shrewd, I thought. He’d read hardly anything Jane had written, and I wondered why he’d sought her out. I never heard Jane give better advice, though I doubted if an interview was going to do much about changing what seemed to be a lifetime’s habits.

(The episode upset Jane considerably—more so than she realized it did, at first. Not only because of the lost time and probably vain effort involved, but because as she talked, she knew she was saying things that applied to her as well. “You’ve got to turn your world upside down,” she told Stuart. “If you don’t like the reality you’ve created, change your focus. Give yourself a chance to use your own creative energy....” After Stuart finally left, to stay at the YMCA, she walked in the kitchen, better than I’d seen her do in some time. She slept fitfully, thinking of him often when she woke up. She talked about him today. We wondered what he was doing today. He’d talked about going north, or heading back to San Francisco, where he’d seen helicopters changing their courses in the sky to fly directly at him.

He does not have a nine-to-five job. He is constantly in midst of drama, fleeing for his life. The system supports him, and it would not do so under other conditions. He has some financial sustenance, then, some freedom, as he understands it, and he is the hero, the good guy who is, however, seemingly at the mercy of his enemies.

I am doing my best to explain. I do not want you to think I am without compassion. Novelists create heroes who must overcome obstacles. Some such characters are brave and upright; some of your heroes are scoundrels. Then there are, say, the hunchback of Notre Dame or Frankenstein. In your living you literally bring your ideas to life. You form the story of your life. You are involved in a study of the full dimensions of experience, in the interpretation of events themselves. You are involved in a living process—but one of such multidimensional activity that sometimes you see of course but one chapter in a saga whose full complexion is far different.

When the entire affair really frightens him, he will look for another solution, and it is too bad your institutions of therapy do not help. Guided imagery could help him, for example, but he would need supervision. Ruburt was quite right in the method he used in speaking to him, and my presence would not have served. He would only have used it, as Ruburt said he would. The creative challenge is there for him, and it is one he chose himself.

Give us a moment.... Be sure you do not close your eyes to the miracles of the world. Your point was a good one—the young man walked a good way—the energy was there to sustain him even over his delusions. Beliefs show themselves, however, far more clearly, and can be examined better, through the type of experience those people bring.