“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This session came about because of a phone call I took today from the publicity department at Prentice-Hall. The young girl made an innocent-enough request about Jane doing a radio-phone interview with a station in Houston, Texas. A few weeks earlier Jane had tentatively okayed with publicity the idea of doing an occasional radio-phone interview, based on the condition that first she obtain one of those desk microphones/telephones so that she didn’t have to hold the phone for an hour or more. She’s tried once to locate the equipment, but failed.

(She’s received several recent requests for such interviews from or through Prentice-Hall, and the call this morning brought the matter to a head. When I called Jane at 10:30 and told her about the proposal, I could see that the idea of it made her uneasy. I finally realized that she didn’t really want to do such shows anymore, no matter whether the Sinful Self was involved or not. It came to me that this dilemma was the reason for her much worse hand and arm discomfort: She can barely hold the telephone now, and has much trouble typing. [I’ve also noticed that she keeps such requests lying around on her desk for days before answering them in the negative. I’ve seen her carry such envelopes from room to room with her work, even.]

(What particularly upset me about the flap over publicity was that I saw in it a repetition of past ways of refusing to meet challenges head on involved with the psychic work. I finally understood that Jane didn’t want to do any work involving publicity or interviews, and that for years now she’s bitterly—if unwittingly —resisted such demands, and that these unresolved pressures were having a devastating effect upon her physically. This was all behavior I still could not really comprehend.

First of all, children seek enjoyment. They recognize that enjoyment and self-satisfaction are important gateways to the development of their abilities. You drew because drawing gave you pleasure. Ruburt wrote for the same reason. You did not draw or paint because you felt a responsibility to do so.

(Long pause.) These issues are extremely vital in cases of creativity also, although they operate in all areas. The good parent, for example, is motivated by a sense of enjoyment and fulfillment, in which case his or her “responsibilities” are almost automatically reinforced and performed. People usually talk about what they should do only because they have forgotten how to remember what they want to do.

For some years, to varying extents, Ruburt and you also to a lesser degree became motivated by ideas of who you should (underlined) be, what you should (underlined) be doing, and what your responsibilities were. That tendency became stronger as our “work” became better known. To some extent—with some important variances, having to do with quite legitimate ideas of art—such feelings have also been behind many of your own responses to, say, the appearance of the books, as public packages in the world (intently). In Ruburt’s case the idea of responsibility became far more pervasive, resulting in what I have referred to as being almost a superself image—an image composed of his ideas of the kind of person he should (underlined) be in his position. That image largely at least ignored his own likes or dislikes. He felt he should do many things, for example, that he did not really like to do at all. Small doses of such attitudes can be handled, of course: people do not have to be entirely satisfied with their own performances in order to be reasonably happy and healthy. Remember that you react to interior events, not just to physical ones.

(9:08.) In the main you do what you want to do. Your idea of responsibility may give you a very poor rating, however, in your own eyes for your practical performance in life. The idea of responsibility, as it is understood (underlined), is at its heart other-directed. It may even lead to the idea that the enjoyment of the self alone is wrong. Often chronic physical problems are the end result of such dilemmas. Ruburt felt for years that he should (underlined) become a more public person, do workshops, television shows, radio tours or whatever—that he should (underlined) nearly perform miracles in the psychic arena, that he should have a large class, that he should hold as many sessions for others as possible. Those ideas come to him constantly, of course, or those suggestions, through the mail, the expectations of others, or his observation.

(Long pause.) As creative people, and as certain kinds of creative people —not being audience performers as musicians, for example—you deal with the creative construction of artistic worlds in which as your friend (painter) William Alexander would say, you are the master magician perhaps—but it is your world primarily, created according to your vision. All of the activities that bring you the largest pleasure in life generally are of that nature. This does not mean that you do not enjoy companionship, or that you do not have a give-and-take with society.

He writes because he wants to create a unique world, one in which during the act of creation as a creator he is in charge, and yet while he is in charge he is in contact with a certain magic of creativity that gives him experience with greater realms of being. People of that nature have very private ways, and to some extent now those ways involve a deliberate (long pause) repudiation of the ordinary world—not that they need to stop relating to it, but that they must momentarily forget it in light of another vision. This applies to you as well as to Ruburt. (All very intently.) You do not feel the need to go on tours, for example.

The fact is, however, that he is himself a different kind of person. The radio shows were the least bothersome. He at least could do those at home. He did not want (underlined) particularly to do any of them, though he enjoyed most of them once he began. What he enjoyed, however, was the radio’s fairly secret quality—the fact that he was hidden, and yet his voice went out into the world.

As he began to understand to some degree that he need not be expected to do tours and so forth, he thought of the radio shows as alternate ways of fulfilling his responsibility. The information I gave about his arms in the past was correct. It is also true, however, that his hands and arms became more aggravated in their condition precisely because he did not want to be able to hold the phone to do an hour show. In response, he thought about a gadget that would automatically allow him to speak without holding the phone for so long—this in response to Prentice’s latest project. Tam hinted some time ago that additional ads and advertising to that effect would probably take place. Chronic physical disabilities and problems drag on in a certain fashion because they serve many purposes, and the last groups of sessions show the interior and exterior kinds of controls that those symptoms have provided.

I do not mean to make derogatory statements concerning your social world. Generally speaking, however, the kind of person who performs as a public figure is not the kind of person who could produce highly creative material of an original nature. The public format requires a kind of social shorthand that does not allow for the development or expansion of ideas or creativity, so that the attempt to explain anything like “our work” would be extremely difficult in that regard. We are not speaking to the mass world, and television is set up for the mass audience, for the other-directed part of people.

The overdone sense of responsibility can erode love and satisfaction. Ruburt “loved” to do housework at one time. Later his ideas of responsibility told him he should be working—not because he wanted to be working, but because he should be. At the same time those same worldly concerns led him to wonder about the validity of his own “messages”—and how responsible he was to the world for them—so the symptoms also served to give him a greater sense of caution, to temper creativity, for all the reasons stated in the Sinful-Self material.

(Upon thinking it over—it’s now Sunday afternoon as I finish typing the session—I now believe that I should have said little or nothing, and I became concerned lest I undid, or tried to, what progress Jane has managed to achieve lately. I was angry at session’s end, however, with the fact that she had responded to the publicity dilemma with aggravated hand and arm symptoms, and that it had taken me so long myself to realize what was going on. It made me question what we were doing generally, that such an obvious response should escape our notice. All of this is based on my deep concern for what has befallen Jane—or, more truthfully, what she has created for herself with my cooperation.

(I do think that it will all serve a valuable purpose, however, if we clear up the one major stumbling block over publicity—whether to do or not to do it. If we have solved that dilemma, well and good. Earlier I asked Jane if she was willing to stick by her decision to forgo public life, as stated in the letter she wrote Prentice today, and she said yes. I certainly am, let the chips fall where they may. I for one have no real idea of how Prentice-Hall may react, although Jane told me today that she’s picked up that Prentice-Hall plans to be much more aggressive on questions concerning publicity. I don’t think there will be any hassle, for surely the people at Prentice-Hall know enough about Jane’s abilities and sales and productive talents to know a good thing when they have one, whether or not publicity is involved.

(A note: Jane did tell me Saturday that she’s noticed an improvement in her hands and arms, and also in her ability to get onto the bed from her chair, since we made the decision to not do publicity.)