“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.

(Jane has had some interesting nighttime experiences in connection with the hostages, and has written the brief note attached to the session. She hasn’t been able to really explain them yet; perhaps Seth will comment. My own guess is that she’s touched upon some probable events.

(Tomorrow, the hostages meet President Reagan at the White House. See my files for much material on the whole hostage question of recent months.

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.

Whenever, and for whatever reasons you block the normally free flow of impulses, you also curtail the exercise of free will, for free will involves you in the experience of choosing between the actualization of one impulse or another. The captors then cut down on the freedom of the hostages by reducing the number of impulses to which the hostages could respond. This is all so clear that it is difficult to express step by step. The telling itself makes the affair seem complex—but whether or not you are dealing with private behavior, with the treatment of one person in regard to his or her own impulses, or whether you are dealing with a mass event of political nature, involving the enforced blockage of impulses on the part of one group toward another, you are necessarily cutting down on the exercise of free will.

There is much material, of course, dealing with the hostage situation, for as it in a fashion echoes Ruburt’s own situation, so it also symbolizes the situations of many people, which is why the affair captures the attention of the world. Have Ruburt use his recorded suggestions again for a while. (Pause.) Ruburt feels that some of the threats he felt hidden in the world are now out in the open. They actually seem less dangerous than they did before for that reason. To some extent or another there are always social as well as private aspects to a person’s state of health.

(“I was hardly aware of my ass or anything else,” she said. “I felt a whole lot of stuff there on the hostages—stuff it would take forever to get, darn it....” So we talked about what a great book Seth could do on the hostage question. “Before you got through it would cover history, religion, science—the whole works,” Jane said. I agreed that it would certainly encapsulate our whole civilized world structure before Seth finished it. “Forget it,” Jane said. “We’ve got one half done now.” She wanted to know what would happen to Seth’s book on dreams in the meantime, and I explained that it would only wait until the other project was finished. After all, it was waiting now for us to get back to it.