“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 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.

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.

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.