“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The service station and entire setup was chosen because it represented excellent symbolism, and unconsciously referred you back to the time when your father made his batteries, and owned that business.

In the first scene of this dream you see a probable self, who could reasonably be expected to be the kind of son your father might have, gifted with his hands mechanically, assertive enough to own his own business, however—after all, a part of the American dream, embarked upon employment that he enjoyed, and yet one that provided a service, hence physically seen between the ice (and roller-skating) rink, representing pleasure or fun, and the grocery store, representing service or nourishment. So you might have been that kind of person, with the belief system of your times, and with your background. A man if possible should own his own business, provide a service for the community—and, again, inventiveness or creativity were to be wedded to those pursuits. Your father’s inventiveness, again, dealt often with mechanics.

(Long pause.) Ruburt made certain correlations. He thought, for example, of his own pajamas that he wears now instead of the jeans he wore before, and it seemed to him that in all his strivings he had in one way or another also acted like your friend whose jeans kept turning into the Turkish towel: he had been trying to protect an important way of relating to the world, or to protect a way of life.

Some of this has to do with the complicated nature of creativity itself, and with the contradictions that seem to exist at certain levels. Your kind of creativity has always been together and jointly of a private nature—so much so that you do not even like to work in rooms too close to each other. You have often thought of living under more isolated surroundings. Ruburt has been fascinated at times by the idea of working nights, his ways of assuring such isolation. You began to accumulate some ideas of a different nature, wondering more about your responsibilities to the world as adults, wondering how “useful” art should be in the world.

(3:49.) Ruburt began to wonder about television and so forth for publicity. He wondered if he did not have the responsibility, again, to spread the psychic message outward. Many different pressures operated there. In later years, as books were finished, the matter of publicity would rise anew, but his relative success meant that the issues stayed in the air, so to speak. Your discussion reminded him of how he used to be (pause), and also brought up in his mind the seeming contradictions of creativity, in that it is private, but usually ends up as some kind of public expression.

The symptoms became the sign of reluctance. They helped take the place of the isolated mountain cabin, perhaps. To a large degree they were largely the result of a lack of understanding of himself, brought on by his old religious beliefs of responsibility, then applied to his own creativity. So your dream sparked the discussion that sparked these later emotional realizations on Ruburt’s part—realizations that should go a long way toward removing such feelings of responsibility, and hence relieving the situation considerably.

(Long pause at 4:02.) To some extent at times you each dream dreams that can be used by the other one, and this is a case in point. Ruburt felt that a public career threatened his own, and to some extent your characteristic, natural and absolutely necessary ways of relating with the world.

The mail represents the voice of the world, the needs of its people. It also represents the simple thanks of readers. Ruburt has indeed felt a strong responsibility regarding the predicament of some correspondents—again, because he was not certain as to which purposes his psychic abilities should be put.