“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This is the first session Jane has held since giving the deleted one for last January 7. Once again, she was very uncomfortable as she sat in her chair across the coffee table from me. Earlier today—as she reaffirmed now—she’d said more than once that she wanted to “get back to the sessions, no matter what,” or how she felt. Her bodily condition presented rather large contrasts: Her upper body was very relaxed, her eyes bleary. Her arms were longer, as they had been for some time now. Her backside was sore, as well as her hips and inner thighs at the groin; she couldn’t move forward easily. At the same time her upper legs above the knees were “soft and mushy,” while below the knees the muscles were hard and tight. Yet her feet were in good shape. These are the highlights of her condition. This morning she’d slept for an hour before lunch.

(Jane said she felt Seth around by 9:20, but that she thought the session would be a short one. I told her I was primarily interested in but two things, both personal: her reactions to Mass Events and God of Jane in connection with her symptoms, and what was going on in her backside and hips. She hasn’t “walked” for weeks now—since last year—and the hip problems especially have persisted now for a number of months. I wanted to hear from Seth something about why her body was taking so long to respond in those areas.

(The night before this session was held Jane suggested that each day we read over a session, or talk or review some notes, as a way to give ourselves a “pep talk” and to lead us into the day. So the day of the session, after breakfast this morning, we reread the deleted session for January 7, 1981, which is a very good one. And this morning—Tuesday—I read last night’s session to Jane from my notes, since I didn’t have it typed yet.)

Ruburt found it very difficult to take a public stand, as separate from, say, a private one. My book and his—that is, Mass Events and God of Jane—both do take public stands. They comment clearly on issues that affect individual and private, and national or community behavior. The importance of impulses was stressed in particular, and the acceptance of such an idea is important to Ruburt’s recovery, of course—but also vital in the behavior of nations.

Largely—for I am simplifying here to some considerable degree, but largely—Ruburt felt little difficulties to be encountered in his private search, but in their public expression he was far more cautious. It is impossible, of course, to really separate the two, but as his work became better known, the private search became more of a public issue.

Years ago, when the Gallery of Silence people began to bug him, he felt threatened, afraid that he would become the brunt of fanatics or extremists. He was nevertheless determined to take some kind of a public stand—for not to do so would mean not to express himself through his books at all. He knew he would never give into that course, but he felt that some of that dates back to childhood habits and beliefs, when his very food and bed was given him by the auspices of the public.

He was taught to be very cautious lest that livelihood be taken away. The only private fears he had were also old ones, having to do with the whole false-prophet syndrome, the fear of leading people down the garden path, and so forth. Those private and public arenas became connected, however. (Long pause.) He was worried that his natural expression and search, publicly expressed at that point in history, was dangerous because it put him in the gaze of a growing band of fanatics on the one hand, and also roused old fears of a private nature, having to do with the overall validity of revelatory information.

The information in Mass Events and in our sessions helped him use impulses to a far better degree than he had before, and helped him keep some balance, let him advance in understanding despite the period of difficulty. Still at various times and throughout the period, he used what he thought of as that additional protection: the symptoms kept him inside, where it seemed he could indeed express himself with the least duress. At the same time he was learning that expression denied at one level means expression denied to some extent at all levels (louder)—so that of course his creative work also suffered to some degree.

(10:42 PM. Jane closed her eyes as Seth, and when she opened them that personality was gone. The session had hardly been a short one; I told her it was excellent.

(“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.

(As I finished it this evening, however, I can see now that the session is even a better one that I’d thought. Actually, it contains the key to Jane’s recovery, and her progress continues. I massaged her thighs after supper. This afternoon, when I told her it was okay to relax, “even to walk,” she said “something melted” inside her, and she became more relaxed. In fact, she slept for over an hour this morning. She planned to try for a session this evening, she said, as I went back to my typing.

(I might add that Seth’s capsule commentary on the reasons for her symptoms is just what I wanted, and that we ought to keep copies of it available for easy reference. The thought came to me after supper that Jane’s doing the ESP classes probably contributed to the symptoms over the years, since the class situation was one in which she advanced her unconventional ideas to the public. I haven’t had a chance to discuss this with her, but it seems possible that her disseminating her ideas to a large number of people, in person each week, could have struck her deep-seated need for protection.... If Jane reads this material before holding a session tonight, perhaps Seth can comment.)