“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In one way or another many artists of whatever kind seek to physically express these innermost overtones. As Ruburt mentioned, years ago in Sayre he would find someplace in your apartment that seemed somehow secret for his workroom. He would then momentarily, for a while, withdraw from the workaday world. On other occasions he would write nighttimes, letting those hours by themselves create their own moods of secrecy and isolation from the social environment.

The fact that some isolation suits you both made the affair palatable enough in the beginning. The idea of a public life—to some extent, now—has hung over his head, so to speak, almost like a threat. He told himself that if he were using his abilities as he should, he would then naturally seek out their public expression.

He took it for granted that, ideally speaking, he should do such public work, that it was his responsibility, but also that it represented a natural expression of abilities that he was denying because of his fears. So often he told himself that if he got better he would only be too glad to go on television or whatever, or to do whatever he was supposed to do.

(Pause at 10:20.) It goes without saying that this is all black and white thinking. He writes his own books because writing is such a natural part of his expression. It is his art. Ideally it is his play as well, and his books serve as his own characteristic kind of public expression, fulfilling the most private and the most public poles of his psychological activity.

Now spontaneously he would give more sessions for others, quite happily and easily, but in the framework of the situation, the black or white aspect holds back such expression. (Pause.) He would probably see more groups, as you both did at 458 together, were it not for the black or white thinking, but this would be in response to quite spontaneous urgings to do so. (Pause.) The spontaneous self can quite spontaneously say no—and most of his spontaneous feelings toward the public arena are those of quick natural rejection.

(I made quick notes about my insight just now. and transcribe them below without much elaboration. I would say they represent simplistic thinking to some degree—but that, again, I’ve hit on something here that hasn’t been expressed in just this way before. I feel the same mechanisms for understanding operated here as did when I had the insight of February 3—see the deleted session for February 4 [the first in this new series], wherein I wrote that Jane “does the Seth books just to please me.” I think that insight is connected to the following:

(“It would be easy for her to transpose that basic fear of the psychic abilities and Seth into a fear of spontaneity going too far, and of not working at her desk. The intellect wouldn’t dare give too much leeway to the psychic expression, while at the same time being fascinated by the affair and wanting to study it all. But the intellect would insist upon keeping rigid control, fearing that if Jane let her spontaneous self hold sway that it would go whole hog psychically, in the worst way, and destroy all other elements and activities of the personality.”

(“Jane then wanted to do the Seth books and not do them. All of this reflects black or white thinking, of course. Jane could have ended up in as much trouble by not doing the Seth books as she did by doing them, then. As long as repression was used in either direction the whole personality would suffer. What is vital is that the whole personality understands each of its portions, accepts and believes in them, and trusts in their expression. All else in life would flow from that balanced creative free state of being. All portions of the personality will automatically integrate themselves with the others to the benefit of all. Then decisions can be easily made about what activities to pursue in daily life: what books to write, how to deal with the public, etc.”