“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(At 8 PM tonight ABC TV News had begun a three-hour dissertation on the whole American-Iranian-hostage situation, narrated by Pierre Salinger. The program was fascinating, and was actually a sequel to a previous program of equal length that ABC had broadcast a few days ago; we’d seen much of that one, too. I heard Jane listening to this evening’s segment while I was working in the writing room. What a tale of intrigue, personalities, and beliefs it was. And as soon as Seth opened the session, I understood at once how he was going to link that tale with Jane’s own hassles.

(Pause at 9:20.) In either case, however, portions of the self are hampered, restrained, and their expression drastically reduced, and there are bound to be repercussions. Ruburt’s body suffered whether or not he intended it to, because value fulfillment was being further denied. In the case of hostages and those in protective custody, a certain kind of enforced isolation is also bound to happen —and to some degree or another, the individual involved will display in certain areas the same kind of exaggerated postures between various portions of the self, as the Americans and the Iranians display in their behavior together.

One side will be unable to see or understand the behavior of the other side. Each will seem foreign to the other. The American response—generally, now, speaking—to Iranian emotionalism is to become still more self-righteously reasonable, cooler, more superior. The Iranian’s response to the Americans’ reason involves new outbursts of emotionalism and behavior that appear utterly irrational to the American view. So we are often indeed faced with a lack of communication between various portions of the self, or between various portions of the world.