“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This week especially has also been one of emotional turmoil for us, and for many others, on the national scene: the inauguration of President Reagan; the freeing of the American hostages by Iran, and their return to this country in stages. Steve and Tracy Blumenthal have also lent us a complete videotaping set, and we’ve experimented a little bit with filming Jane reading poetry. The Gallaghers have also been featured. We’re waiting for an extension cord from Steve for the TV camera so we can try to record sessions. I’ve wanted to try to film Jane reading poetry in the meantime, but each time I think of asking her —usually at night—I can see that she’s so uncomfortable that I let it go.

It may seem that nations behave only too impulsively, that for example the just-released American hostages were kidnapped as a result of highly impulsive behavior. In fact, that event might only seem to prove that impulsive behavior is basically aggressive, undependable, and chaotic. As a matter of fact, the students took such regrettable actions not because they gave into impulsive behavior, but because the road to true impulsive expression had been blocked so long that such actions became one of the few possible ways of giving vent to certain expressions. When you are a hostage you cannot express your own impulses, of course. Your free will is highly curtailed for all practical purposes. It is curtailed because the number of impulses are so drastically reduced by circumstance.