“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I did not understand what there was to work on about going to the john, since it was absolutely essential that one do so. I told her that as I understood such matters, her behavior could lead to uremic poisoning, or dehydration, should she compensate for “holding it” for such long periods by cutting down on her intake of liquids. I added that dehydration could be just as fatal as uremic poisoning. It was all too obvious that she had reacted to her problems about as far as she could go, at least in that direction.

(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.

(Several times during recent weeks I’ve said that I wished we’d withdrawn Mass Events from publication, using the disclaimer controversy as a ready-made excuse. The idea being that this would hopefully free Jane from worry on that score, at least. Yet working with the pendulum in the bedroom at 12:30 AM last night, she said she still wanted the book published—and therein lay at least one source of much trouble, I thought and said.

(4. She is to begin taking at least one step a day with the help of the typing table.

As far as dilemmas go, he feels one as far as Prentice is concerned, since he sees Prentice as a vehicle (underlined) that moves his work out into the public arena, and he feels that that vehicle is at best presently stalled, while no other one is in immediate practical sight.

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.

In that kind of period, he is more apt to be dissatisfied, brood about his physical condition, and therefore aggravate his symptoms. They are, however, the exterior picture of the inner one—to go ahead or to retreat. To go ahead in what direction? Instead the situation is a stalled one.

(9:02.) He felt a strong commitment to poetry and writing. He could not early accept the idea of having a mission in life outside of the simple one to write, which always propelled him. He examined the sessions thoroughly then for years, not feeling the same kind of self-assurance as he did, you see, with his “own” writing.

(Almost with a laugh:) I was ready to tell you. Those areas include the psychic one, the creative one, the financial one, and the mental one. That is, there are areas of your lives that operate quite smoothly, yet in a fashion almost outside of your conscious direction. What I mean is that these areas bring you most fruitful rewards, so that to a degree you take them for granted, without being aware of the manipulations that occur to bring them about.

(This was one of the spots where I felt like interrupting Seth to protest that I for one—and Jane. too, I believe—do not take such benefits for granted. I try to be grateful each day for what we have, while still being aware that the mechanisms that deliver those benefits to us may operate largely on unconscious levels.)

(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.

This subject is a part of one that I plan as an evening’s discussion. Before, the feelings of panic remained largely hidden, and he has felt to some degree stalled of course for some time, apart from the two books involved.

(Pause.) Both physical stalling of late—and the dreams and occasional feelings of panic—have been incentives of a kind to deal with the deeper beliefs. Those beliefs involve the freedom to move and grow safely and fully to one’s capacities within the framework of your current society.

(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—”)

Have Ruburt make one simple request, and no other, before sleep: that he receive therapeutic healing experiences at all levels of his existence as he sleeps, beginning this evening. End of session.