“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.”

(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.

(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.

(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.

(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.

(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.

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.

(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.