“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Long pause at 9:20.) Ruburt’s creative nature early began to perceive at least that man’s existence contained other realities that were deeper. (Long pause.) Some of this is difficult to separate. To leave the church, say, meant to carry still some of the old beliefs, but without the Band-Aids that earlier offered some protection.

He began to search actually from childhood in a natural fashion toward some larger framework that would offer an explanation for reality that bore at least some resemblance to the natural vision of his best poetry. I have said before that many creative people, highly gifted, have died young in one way or the other because their great gifts of creativity could find no clear room in which to grow. They became strangled by the beliefs of the cultural times.

(9:37.) The sessions then opened the door to a particular kind of value fulfillment that was natural to Ruburt’s being. Now to some extent it was that poor, unhappy Sinful Self, a psychological structure formed by beliefs and feelings, that was also seeking its own redemption, since even it had outgrown the framework that so defined it.

(Long pause.) Ruburt broke through both psychically and creatively—that is, the sessions almost immediately provided him with new creative inspiration and expression and with the expansions needed psychologically that would help fulfill his promise as a writer and as a mature personality. He was still left, however, with the beliefs in the Sinful Self, and carried within him many deep fears that told him that self-expression itself and spontaneity were highly dangerous.

In the meantime, since he was older, and in the light of our sessions, it seemed to him that he must have outgrown many of the beliefs of early childhood, and that he must have enough perspective so that those earlier feelings and fears no longer applied. They were highly unpleasant.

So we must now show Ruburt the source of the Sinful Self to begin with, and convince him that such is not his natural self at all and to do so we will to some extent at least go into his early background. The main thrust, however, will be the need for expression and value fulfillment that to one extent or another has always been impeded by the beliefs inherent in the entire Sinful-Self concept.

(I should note that Jane seems to misunderstand my attitude here: the aim is not to use halting work on Seth’s latest book as a curative device, but to at least keep things from getting any worse. It came to seem to me that finishing this latest book would only be more of the same, with the same attitudes and beliefs behind it—hence, how could it help? I never told Jane, for example, to not finish the book. I did suggest that she hold off publication of it until we’d tried to learn something. Even so, it will be a long while before said volume is finished, let alone ready for the press. I devoutly hope we manage to learn something in the meantime. I only know, meanwhile, that what we have been doing so far has led to results that we fear. It will be interesting to see how this little dilemma is resolved, and what the long range results are, if any.)

(10:17.) Ruburt was not responsible for his mother’s reality, for her characteristics, reactions, or beliefs. He was not responsible for her marriage, its breakup, for his mother’s illness, again, or for the entire “tragedy” that he sees as his mother’s life.

(Long pause.) Those beliefs to some extent or another appear without their strong religious connotations in your own life and background also, and this will also be discussed in the series. The idea of Ruburt’s book (on rationalism) is a good one because it represents creative impetus—undertaken, however, in the light of newer understanding, and I will have more to say concerning that issue.

(I added that I’d had no idea that the idea of the Sinful Self occupied that prominent and basic a position in her life. It was beginning to look as if the Sinful Self concept occupied the central position in her beliefs. It would make a lot of sense, I said, if it were true, and would account for things like an obsession with work, giving up other life activities, etc.—all done in a disguised attempt to appease that Sinful Self that merrily carried on year after year.... “But in a funny way that may be okay,” I mused, “because if that’s it, we now know where we can grab hold of the Sinful Self, once we know what we’re doing, not groping around in a morass of suppositions and speculations.”)