“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Even before our sessions began, you both knew that generally speaking, now, you were quite different from other people, highly gifted creatively and intellectually. You suspected that you were not as “mired” (long pause) as other people were, and also that in some fashion you were not as committed to usual (underlined) physical experience. You felt sometimes as if you wanted to spy upon life, observe it rather than live it directly. This was not because you were afraid of life (as I often wondered when I was younger), but because your purposes and intents were different.

The usual framework of married life with children was not to be a part of your experience this time, and both of you took pains to see that you did not have children—or mates that wanted them. To some extent you both felt guilty that a certain kind of clear knowledge seemed so naturally and clearly available. Your own physical attributes and sports proficiency saw that kind of extension physically translated. To a lesser degree, Ruburt’s agility, his performance as a dancer and so forth, gave him the feeling that even physical achievements carried an ease that many did not possess. You did not feel, however, as if you particularly related well with other people, and as you grew older it seemed that any changes would have to come from you (not others.

(Long pause at 9:30.) It might be fairly easy, Ruburt suspected, to become even contemptuous of others. You both felt, again to some degree, that people could not understand your particular kinds of creativity. They could easily become jealous. They could also highly resent your abilities. You both felt an honest and deep compassion for other people, however: even winning in a sports event, you felt sorry for the loser.

Ruburt picked up the idea instead, and toyed with it. When the sessions started you were both amazed at the ease with which the material was received, struck by its quality, aware at certain levels of its challenge. Ruburt was astonished, and became more so at the spontaneous nature of his own and my creativity. (Long pause.) There were certain deep questions about life, certain pressing problems about man’s condition, with which you felt you had little experience, since your primary goals had been to examine life, to stand apart from it to study it, And therefore you both felt that you had few of the same concerns as those that led other people (quietly intent).

(Long pause.)In a way, to a degree—the qualifications are necessary—you provided yourselves an extra kind of commitment that would keep your observations of life from becoming too surface, or so it seemed. When your parents were alive, their problems could be used somewhat in a second-handed fashion for the same purposes. Before that, jobs for both of you served to make you rub elbows, so to speak, with others, and to equalize your paths and theirs. As you became better off financially you felt the need again for that kind of equalization, or handicap.

Both of you—to some extent, now, following this evening’s discussion —felt that with two books and perhaps even the poetry book coming out in one year, people would think it was easy enough for you to write your pronouncements from the hilltop, even though in those books you made certain that you mentioned any and all difficulties that came your way, collected your stories of hassles with scientists or publishers, and so forth.