“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(We almost didn’t have the session. An unexpected visitor arrived at about 8 PM—Walter from Connecticut—and Jane talked to him for at least half an hour. Then she did the dishes, and so forth. All this time she was so uncomfortable in her chair that I thought she’d pass up the session, although I’d been hoping she’d get at least a little something on herself; I thought we shouldn’t be losing any chances to do so at this time.

(Finally she called me for the session at 9:40 PM. Again she struggled to get comfortable, just as she’d done for last Wednesday night’s session. Walter is a nice young man. I went back to working on taxes while Jane talked to him, and at the same time found myself wondering whether his unexpected visit might symbolize one of the very facets of Jane’s dilemma about privacy versus the public life—at least as I understand it: Her vulnerability and availability to anyone who chooses to come here. We can’t get away. Others must know this, by whatever means, and may take advantage of her immobility. Walter, for example, told us that when he woke up this morning he decided to go see Jane Roberts—so he just came. [This was his second visit, the first being a couple of years ago.]

(“Walter wants to be ‘a great psychic teacher’ like me or Cayce,” Jane said as we waited for Seth to come through. He therefore expressed an attitude typical of many visitors or those who write—attitudes that really bother Jane. “I didn’t feel good when he came in.” Jane continued, “but at the same time I enjoyed talking to him. He energized me and I forgot my troubles....” Walter didn’t stay too long, as noted, because I’d asked him not to. In this case at least, then, Jane had reacted positively to someone drawn to her by a public aspect of her abilities.

(Jane had remarked the other day that she thought Seth would talk about her reaction to class and the mail—topics discussed in the opening notes for the last session. I was also still thinking about her reaction to the sessions themselves: the idea that she could feel inferior to Seth and/or the material was, as I noted, a pretty new one for me, and somewhat surprising. Yet Jane had said recently that such thoughts had come to her. See page 289 of the last session. I noted there that I didn’t recall her telling me about such feelings.

(I suggested now that Seth talk about Jane’s very uncomfortable state concerning her backside, hips and legs. At the same time, her neck was so relaxed that her head kept dipping down. I said I felt that her fears were behind much of her hip discomfort, and she had admitted to feelings of fear several times lately—including today when she did her notes. She finally felt Seth around at 9:55. She still sat stiffly upright in her chair as we talked a bit and waited. Finally: “I guess I’m about ready, but I think it’ll be short....”)

(So here again, we have a reference to Jane’s possible feelings about Seth and what he does, regardless of whether his labors may be eventually published as “a Seth book.”

(11:02 PM. “I remember some—not much,” Jane said. And once again, I told her, she had given an excellent session.

(In some way portions of Seth’s material tonight triggered an awareness of my own—not a new one, yet it seemed somehow that it was quite significant. Simply that the whole hassle Jane and I are involved in first showed itself—clearly—when we met with Instream in Oswego, and encountered the disbelieving young nameless psychologist. I found myself reviving Jane’s hesitation on the jungle gym at the park on the lake at Rochester; we’d stopped there on our way home from Oswego, and brother Dick had taken us to the lake.

(“I didn’t trust myself up there at the top of that thing,” Jane said. “That was the first time I had trouble with my physical body, that I didn’t trust it. And I knew we were going to go home and start that series of tests for Doctor Instream....”