“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

DELETED SESSION

(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.

(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.

(“But it’s the same old story,” I told Jane when I asked that she have a session tonight, to deal with her hands and arms, and Seth’s remark. “I’m the one who’s asking for it, not you.” What I wondered, of course, was why she wasn’t the one who demanded the help.

(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.

I gave you a session not too long ago dealing with the natural person, and specifically with Ruburt’s natural characteristics. I outlined the ways in which he naturally behaved. This other-directed superself image, however, largely of social construction, superimposes the idea of responsibility over the idea of enjoyment, and in many cases is in direct contradiction as far as Ruburt’s natural tendencies are concerned.

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.

(“You did on the hands and arms, but how about more on the remark you made in that past session, about Jane’s symptoms getting worse before they get better?”)

End of session. You will find there is more in it than perhaps you see presently, and my heartiest wishes to you both.

End of session.

(10:20 PM. The session had been excellent—so excellent that I’d felt like interjecting many questions as Seth preceded along: one of those times when I had a hard time not injecting myself, with my own impatience, into the session. I did explode at its end briefly, however, and Jane sat silently while I ranted and raved.

(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.