“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(We’ve had several of our famous discussions since the last session on March 25. I feel caught in contradictions—for if Jane’s new feelings in her hips and legs are signs of new muscular activity, as she thinks, and as Frank Longwell agrees, that’s good news; yet those same feelings, her acute and prolonged bodily discomfort, her aches and pains, have caused her to become almost totally inactive. As I wrote in question 13 some weeks ago now, she has surrendered just about all activity except that involved with getting up and lying down, eating, going to the bathroom on a very limited basis, and puttering about in her breezeway writing room for an hour or so on occasion. She’s managed to get her poetry book out to Prentice, and now is not at work on any writing. She’s even let go writing up her recent dream material, some of which has been excellent, with apparent precognitive information of a positive nature.

(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.

Both the change in Tam’s position, and changes that take place in the company contributed, along with your own strong dissatisfactions with Prentice to begin with. Creatively, on that level alone, he also feels stalled, since he does not know whether or not to continue with my book, or whether or not to begin one of his own—so you have a stalled mobility, without any particular decisions being made of a clear-cut nature.

(Long pause.) I have remarked before that part of the problem lies in discrepancies of growth. You spoke (today) of some artists painting formula paintings. For Ruburt to try to publish usual novels, for example, would not work: he has outgrown the formulas. At the same time, for many reasons there has been a difficulty in accepting the natural patterns of his own individualistic growth—and that is partially because there were no neat categories in which they seemed to naturally fall. So in searching out new ways, personally and creatively, Ruburt felt himself on insecure ground.

(9:16.) I am aware of the pressing nature of your concerns, and of the sharpness of the physical picture as you perceive it—yet I must continue (almost with a smile) to maintain the following points: a concentration upon a problem deepens it. An overly intense search for what is wrong is debilitating—particularly when you end up looking for events as scapegoats rather than for the beliefs with which certain events are perceived.