“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.

(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.

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 did believe that I had answered that question this evening, specifically concerning the radio interviews, but also pertaining to the entire matter of Prentice publicity for the books just published.