“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Last night, Jane spent an exhausting couple of hours trying to get through to a young man, Stuart, who called on us unannounced at about 9 PM. He suffered from the attacks of “magicians” who were stealing his energy: “Plates” of energy were being stripped away from his chest in layers, until he feared his inner self would be exposed. He was also stalked by people in vans with antennae—they wanted to clone him.

(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.

(At 8:30 this evening we got our answer. Stuart was back at our front door. I refused to let him in. He’d washed his face and looked fresher. He told me that within the last five hours something had happened that he’d feared all his life: he’d lost the last of his energy. His inner self was exposed and vulnerable. Yet he’d walked the two miles and more to our house from the YMCA, I thought ironically. His tale showed that Jane’s efforts of the night before had largely been futile. I told him she couldn’t help him, that we didn’t have the time. He accepted docilely, and gave me his address in San Francisco. He left, and Jane still had the impulse to have me call him back in another effort to help him. I said no in any event. Stuart didn’t know when he’d leave town, so I said he should return to his friends in California. He said he probably would.

We now have a young man who is quite important. He is so important that others pursue him psychically. His abilities and powers are so great that others, seemingly now, try to rob him of them. Far from living a colorless life, he wanders through the country, in the midst of an exciting psychic chase, pursued by magicians, evil powers, and the most sophisticated weaponry of giant corporations and the government.

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.

His problems are cosmic in their proportions, or so it seems to him. He has excitement, again, drama, some freedom. These are his boons. On the one hand he knows that he is involved in a façade, playing a game, pretending to be mad. On the other hand, the game itself is becoming too real, getting out of hand, and it has prevented him from learning ordinary skills, say, which seem to be mundane and too ordinary and beneath him.

Any purpose is better than none, and any intended personalized threat is better than an existence in which no life is important enough to be individually threatened, so these imagined threats serve to convince our young man that his life must have meaning or purpose—otherwise others would not be so intent on destroying him. He is clothed and fed. He lives with adventure, threat, and must forever be on guard. He sees himself fleeing across the continent—again, a hero in a vast drama, a romantic picture. He does not want allies, for he dramatizes his isolation.

The young man is setting himself against society, against its ideas of sanity. He is creating a reality that is in its way highly unique—a creation he feels at least is his own. It is anything but boring. Its very danger keeps him on his toes, and forces him to protect his life. It is saving him from suicide. It is therefore a mental device meant to protect his life.

He must protect himself from threats from without. The threats convince him, again, that he must be important and valuable. Beneath this is the feeling that his life is of no value, that he is in fact worthless, weaker than his peers, and he detests himself enough so that he might take his own life. The threats then convince him of his value. To give them up would be to face his feelings of worthlessness. The situation also allows him to use his creative abilities in terms of fantasy and imagination. He was taught not to express himself, so he only uses those abilities to protect his life, which justifies them. His dilemma makes him important.

The latest of course is the fear of cloning, but our young man does better than any fear-mongers, for he has the personal cloning people in their eerie vans with antennae, chasing him through the streets. He becomes a sponge for numberless such attitudes, only to him they become critically immediate. He is, however, still alive after each threat, and this convinces him that he will indeed survive. For look what he has survived so far, even though the threats grow more monstrous.

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.