“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(After supper Venice McCullough [Palmer] visited us. She and her husband are staying overnight at Bumbalo’s before she goes upstate to help her daughter while the granddaughter has an operation for a cleft palate. Venice seemed good, yet was heavier than ever. She dwarfed Jane as the two sat side by side on the couch. “Now there’s something she could do, something about by making a decision,” I said later, meaning her weight. I thought such a decision would be simple compared to the ones Jane is trying to cope with.

(It was 8:20 when Venice left, and we sat for the session. The noises from the fireplace had been quite loud earlier, but now all was quiet. “They’re squirrels,” Frank Longwell had stated this noon. He promised to bring a ladder to the house next week so we could inspect the flue from the roof. I felt better: Squirrels at least would have a chance to get out—but fledgling birds?

(I had 2 pages typed on last night’s session, and gave Jane page 1 so she could refresh herself on my question, the one that Seth had begun discussing, about the intensity of her reactions. “Well, I almost feel him around now,” Jane said at 8:42.)

Now: Ruburt made an excellent connection today.

The Sinful Self was highly suspicious of any such activity. I believe we have begun an excellent natural therapy in that regard. Ruburt is working at all angles of the problem at other levels of consciousness now, and the Sinful Self is beginning to feel a new sense of give-and-take. (Pause.) Other portions of Ruburt’s personality do utilize our material also, of course, and we deal with a certain kind of natural pacing. It is an excellent idea to go over these sessions one at a time and keep the material in the forefront of consciousness for a while.

I am pacing these sessions now, granting the four or so a week, according to his own experiences, so that the material can also be assimilated along the way. The last few sessions are highly important. (Long pause.) Some of that material is now being used by the so-called Sinful Self itself—which is now open to new information. It is quite earnest in its own desire to “be good,” or to feel a sense of grace in its being, so it does understand that kind of purpose.

All in all, those results are considered by the Sinful Self, now, as regrettable but necessary, as perhaps the use of overly severe discipline, or the use of punishment “for the personality’s own good”—all of which makes perfect sense within the belief structure of the Sinful Self and the larger philosophical structure of Christianity itself.

(A most revealing and damaging answer. “Does the Sinful Self have any conception that its policies have now become self-defeating?”

In the framework of the Sinful Self’s points of reference and in the Catholic philosophy in which it is based, suffering for a good purpose, toward a good end, toward a good goal for the sake of the soul, is a virtue. (Pause.) The entire Catholic dogma is built about Christ’s agony and death. Now to a portion of the personality believing in that system, Ruburt’s position makes hardly a ripple. That system regards the body as highly distracting, disruptive, heir to the lusts of the flesh, and so forth. Its discipline through suffering is one of Christianity’s most appalling effects.

(I thought so too. The first question automatically led to the following ones. There were many more to be asked, too. I was appalled, while thinking at the same time that perhaps at last we’ve finally reached the core of the problem, and can take steps to do something about it. The Sinful Self.... What a concept, I thought, speculating briefly about the untold damage it must have done to millions of people over the centuries. My first thought after the first question’s answer had been that it must be excised from Ruburt’s character, or at least that its beliefs must be changed so much that it becomes unrecognizable compared to what it is now.