“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

In that regard, Ruburt’s creativity kept struggling for its own growth and value fulfillment. His psychic recognition or initiation represented a remarkable breakthrough, meant to give him that additional psychic room that would insure the continued expansion of the abilities of the natural self. The Sinful Self concept is a personal one for each who holds it, but it is also projected outward onto the entire species, of course, until the whole world seems tainted.

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.

(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.

A point: the answer does not lie for example in deciding not to finish my book (Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment). You are free to finish my book or not as you prefer, but not to finish it thinking that such an action will help solve your difficulties would not work.

(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.)

(“Can you give him a suggestion that would help him with the table, and going to the john?”)

(10:33 PM. Jane had done very well. She remembered Seth mentioning her book idea—on rationalism—although she didn’t have “any great feelings yet” about it—how to do it or start it. I was surprised that she was interested in a study of rationalism, since her own abilities would seriously question many of rationalism’s tenets, at least in ordinary terms.

(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.”)