“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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.

(For several days now I’d been thinking about a remark of Seth’s in one of the earliest of this group of sessions, to the effect that Jane’s symptoms would get worse before they got better as we tried to cope with them. I’ve wished, often that I’d asked him to elaborate at the time—or at least marked the session so that I could find the remark later. Well, now Jane’s symptoms are worse. Before the session began I tried to locate the remark, but couldn’t. I felt considerable frustration, and finally laid the book aside. “Well, I hope I don’t ever have to find a specific remark in these sessions any more, “because it’s becoming impossible.”

(Meaning, of course, that the sessions have grown so extensive that they’ve become a closed system in themselves; without an index it’s now very difficult to track down specific material. I gave up my few attempts at indexing years ago, and now don’t even make notes on the index pages any more.

Now. I will answer your main question this evening—but I will approach that material of course in my own way, and I will begin by reminding you of some important issues mentioned before.

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.

(9:38.) In a way, Ruburt’s symptoms ended up as providing a system of controls, serving in several rather than one area, but areas that he is now exploring in rather concentrated form. The symptoms did serve partially as face-saving devices, and for both of you to some extent, to explain behavior of your own that perhaps you did not understand—though this largely involves Ruburt’s behavior, of course.

Ruburt has been working with them on a much more conscious level. The stability of the system of course is threatened. The difficulty with Ruburt’s arms and hands bother his typing now, showing him finally in no uncertain terms that the system has served its purpose long ago, and that his creativity is dependent upon psychological and physical mobility. The symptoms have been aggravated to some extent, then, bringing to the forefront of his mind the very problems that require his attention.

(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.