“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I was so absorbed typing that Jane had to call me three times for the session. Finally I heard her at 8:50. Once again we sat waiting, she on the couch as before. I mentioned what Seth had said about her father in the last session, and asked her if she thought material on her mother might help. To my surprise Jane agreed. But I didn’t want such material to interrupt whatever Seth might be planning for tonight.)

(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.

His poetry acted in some regards as a stimulator. That breakthrough, you might say, with perhaps some exaggeration, was a life saver, for without some such expansion Ruburt would have felt unable to continue the particular brand of his existence. It is not possible to say in words what one person or another looks for in life, or what unique features best promote his or her growth and development. Even two plants of the same kind sometimes require completely different treatments.

In that regard, you have what amounts to a creative dilemma.

It is one thing to say that the dilemma is unfortunate, but it is also true to say that the dilemma existed because of a breakthrough that gave him what amounted to a new life at the time....

(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.

The mass reality is ready for such a change. (Long pause.) In the past the Sinful-Self idea was so a part of Ruburt’s conditioning that it set up an entire framework of behavior. The need to justify life through writing, the exaggerated need for protection from the deceptive unconscious and the unsafe world, and the concept itself were so involved with his entire thinking patterns that he could not isolate it to see where and how it bore upon his activities. Now we can separate those strands.

(“What do you think about the idea of one step at a time with the typing table each day?”)

(But I stressed that no matter what she did about books, no matter what hassles we might get involved in about that activity, she just couldn’t give up physical mobility in order to express any lack of psychological mobility that we might become involved in. It was too high a price to pay, too unnecessary. “You just can’t,” I said, “no matter what happens, professionally....” She agreed.

(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.”)