“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.

(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.

(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.

Ruburt is correct: he could be a hero of a short story, and so he appears to himself. It is his way of gaining stature in a world he believes is meaningless. He is afraid that he has few abilities of any kind, so he must of course take steps to see that they are never put to the test in the physical world—hence, some disaster or another always prevents the great creativity that he says he has to offer.

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.

Your young man gave you an excellent instance—a “case” that the most noteworthy psychologists or psychiatrists, if they had time, would find fascinating. You were able to gain insights that you simply would not have if you were not presented with exaggerated realities. Your young psychologist was a case in point, with his “crazies,” your Andrija Puharich, your young people with the child, about Christmas time.

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.