“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I finished typing last Monday’s session just before we sat for this one. At my request Jane read the page of notes I’d attached to the end of the session. I didn’t ask that she or Seth comment on the notes, but at least I’d made it possible for either one to do so. Among other things I’d written that Monday’s session was even better than I’d thought it was.

(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.

What is perfectly clear to one portion of that world brain may not be perceived at all by the other side, and vice versa. For the purposes of this discussion, we must simplify, so we will say that generally speaking your own country aligns itself with the world of reason, while in the same fashion Iran allies itself with the world of emotion. Both react, again, by exhibiting exaggerated versions of the characteristics involved, however. The same applies in any personality who attempts to separate the intellect and the emotions from their necessary unity within psychological structure. In either case, you end up with the need for negotiators, who attempt to bring the two sides into at least some alignment, or to correct the vision and perception of each side until the situation of the other side is at least perceived with some clarity.

The person seeks a certain kind of expression while also feeling that the same expression is either dangerous, forbidden, or for one reason or another impossible to achieve. This applies to human personal problems and to political ones in which entire peoples are involved.

Many of the methods used to find solutions actually involve the setup of negotiations on the part of nations—the third party or parties—who in the beginning can communicate with each side, explaining one side’s viewpoint to the other. The setting up of communication with individuals, communication between the various portions of the self, is highly desirable then. This is often accomplished quite automatically as other portions of the self form themselves into negotiative postures, inserting various thoughts and ideas and feelings to the opposing psychological camp.

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.

(9:37.) Over a period of time you ended up with two exaggerated postures —artificial ones—with the spontaneous elements of the personality straining for the full use of their abilities (in parentheses: value fulfillment), and the reasoning one determined to pursue such endeavors—but with caution. The intellect’s reasons, however, were not entirely its own, but only appeared to be because the opposing camps were so out of communication. The intellect actually quite unknowingly made those reasoning deductions on an emotional basis from an outdated picture of the world, held jointly by emotions and intellect years ago in Ruburt’s childhood.

We are now involved with reassuring Ruburt that it is safe to move, and ultimately that it is safe to relax. We are trying to reassure him that relaxation is indeed a part of a creative process, and that it also makes all other motion possible. (Pause.) Such a statement can be accepted by all portions of the self, but it must be emphasized time and time again. In the meantime, there can seem to be other reasons, different ones, that crop up to make his attitudes seem more rational. These are part of the modes of behavior adopted by the portion of the self held in custody, so to speak.