“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(We haven’t had a session for three weeks now. To my mind, our situation has steadily deteriorated. I think it came to a head yesterday, when I finally realized that for the last few days Jane had cut down her visits to the bathroom to just two times a day—upon arising, and before going to bed. Her reason for this, when I questioned her, was that “it hurts to move. But I’m working on it.”

(A remark she made yesterday probably had helped crystallize my own new determination to do something about what seemed to be a badly eroding situation: She said that Tam had recently told her that Mass Events was due to be published on the 13th—today—with God of Jane due out early in May. These two books are, I think we agree, the most recent triggers that she has responded to in a negative way, so yesterday I suddenly realized that Jane must be reacting presently to the imminent publication of those two works. It seemed obvious. I knew they were due out soon, but slipped up in my own awareness that their publication could—would cause her additional problems; my opinion was based on her paper of last December, in which she wrote that from its very inception she had been concerned about the reception Mass Events would be accorded by various elements of the public.

(I still think that paper is a very revealing one, for it contains several important clues that we should keep always in mind, but often do not. Among them is Jane’s fear of the controversial nature of Seth’s medical material, which led to Prentice-Hall’s installation of the hated disclaimer.

(Jane didn’t sleep very well, so I didn’t call her this morning. Instead after breakfast I wrote down my list of points to discuss with her. I saw them as making a significant alteration—at least potentially—in our lives. But then, I thought, given our present situation our lives were going to change anyhow and perhaps drastically: her not going to the john properly wasn’t a good sign.

(6. The next step will be to seek medical help—namely, going to a hospital for tests, therapy, diagnosis, medication, whatever. I plan to ask Paul O’Neill about how to get her admitted, or at least examined. Or I’ll go to a hospital myself and ask to talk to someone. The idea isn’t that a stay in the hospital will work a miracle cure —though I’d be delighted if it did —but that some help or easing of Jane’s symptoms might eventually be achieved through therapy or whatever. My personal opinion at the moment is that we should have taken this step a long time ago. Interesting, to speculate about why I’ve concurred in Jane’s dogged avoidance in seeking establishment medical help.

(Jane didn’t react as much to point 6 as I thought she might. The last time I’d suggested that she consider getting medical help had been at Christmas time, when I asked her to think it over and let me know. But I haven’t heard a word on the subject from her.

(Jane has had several vivid dreams since we held the last session; they’ve been of the type described in recent private sessions—combinations of nightmarish events and characters, along with flashes of insight into the causes for the symptoms, and visions of herself walking normally, etc. But she’s written very little on them. However, they’ve been valuable in showing that she is still contending with previously buried fears. We keep hoping these will play in important part in letting her achieve more physical release. But at the moment it seems that everything is difficult, or worse, especially so when I worry about how far she has to go simply to get her legs to straighten out at least partially. I did feel, I told her, that a time of decision was very near.

(As soon as I’d finished reading my list of points to her, this morning, Jane called Tam about the publication of Mass Events. He told her the book hadn’t arrived in the office yet, but that he expected it to, and that he would check to see if it was on schedule. He would then send us the usual first copy.)

That insecurity has largely prevented him from fully using his own abilities on his own behalf (intently). He is gifted precisely with the kind of abilities that can clear up all of his problems. Fears, however, have prevented him from fully trusting—or consistently trying—such avenues, not only fears, but the batteries of past beliefs, both on his part and yours, with their unfortunate patterns of behavior and conditioned responses. It is sometimes difficult for me to translate what I know about the situation into terms that you can accept jointly, because of the press of those beliefs and the accompanying habitual behavior and conditioning.

Even there you have learned, of course, and Ruburt’s knowledge and yours has helped you both in your health in many ways—but you have not used your abilities in that direction in the same fashion that you have otherwise, and in the newest attempt to help set him free (deeper), I hope to lean you in those directions.

We will be dealing with Ruburt’s beliefs, of course, with the psyche and the books, and the other furniture of the mind that seems so obvious, but I hope to teach you to transform those issues into something else. I do not want to speak of great missions, yet it is also true that in its fashion each creature’s life is a mission, with all of its characteristics and abilities uniquely suited.

Ruburt’s abilities carry along with them all of the support, protection and strength he needs to use them freely and creatively, but he has not understood that that was so. That sentence should be completely underlined.

(Pause at 9:41.) You are conditioned to behave in certain fashions in times of stress, so it is indeed at such periods that old beliefs often seem to emerge with fresh force. I will deal with the situations involved, but I will also try to elicit the creative use of your own psychic and mental abilities, so that they can be directed specifically toward clearing up such issues—and I am of course willing to have daily sessions at your request.

(My questions are paraphrases of the ones I actually asked Seth, since I didn’t take the time to write them down because of their length during the session itself. But much of the phrasing is almost verbatim, since I made notes after the session, besides remembering them clearly.

(9:46.) The closest answer I can give you, I thought, was clear in tonight’s session, but to clear it further: (Long pause.) He believed that his motion was blocked, that belief was physically expressed. It was to bring the situation out into the open, as indeed the feelings of panic also served to make him consciously aware of the difficulty—a difficulty that basically has to do with psychological motion and growth.

(Seth paused, so I asked: “But what does he think he’s doing? Why carry anything to such lengths? I’m not asking for a perfect performance, and I couldn’t deliver one myself, but it’s extreme behavior on his part when he can’t walk across the goddam room—”)

(“But I don’t think asking him to be able to walk is a standard demand,” I said. “What good does his giving up his physical mobility do? There must be many other ways of calling attention to any problems than doing that.”

(“All right, but nothing I’ve said here is new. I’ve had these questions for years.”)

(Jane remembered my talking to Seth—the longest exchange I’d had with him for years. She explained that in trance she was aware of my questions “in the back of her mind,” and of Seth answering them, and that in a way the questions would get in the way of what Seth was trying to say; they could interrupt too deeply; I’d known this from a few infrequent, much earlier, experiences in the sessions, and had often thought that if too persistent the questions could bring her out of trance. But now I felt that we had to do something drastic to make a start, and that we had achieved something.

(“We’ve got to get the information,” I told Jane, and found myself repeating a lot of what I’d said to Seth; I felt the emotional charges behind the questions once again. Jane was very glum. “But I’m running into trouble coping with this thing,” I told her, “and I need your help. I have to get it, too—otherwise there are going to be drastic changes in our lives.”

(“Well, I know I’m right.” I said. “I’ve seen the same situation come up many times in the past, and let it go, but we can’t do that now....” And I didn’t even get to mention the doctor-hospital option to Seth. I did tell Jane I understood what Frank Longwell was doing, and appreciated his efforts to help, so generously given. But I added that FL could massage her legs “till doomsday,” and it would do little good until we came to terms with the basic causes behind the symptoms.