“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I’ve reread the last session to Jane from my notes each morning since it was held. The question I asked at its end—about what effects my opinions of Prentice-Hall might have had on Jane over the years—has been on my mind ever since I asked it, and Seth replied that it was “too big a subject” to go into at once. Tonight I explained to Jane after supper that I now believed many of my opinions were taken by her as negative personal opinions about her work and efforts—which meant, I added, that they must have contributed at least substantially to her symptoms over the years.

(Yet she found the changes frightening, although she kept in mind Seth’s material that the fright was not to be feared but understood as expressing buried fears, to put it simply. When she called me for the session at 8:30, she showed me how she has picked up unaccustomed movement in her legs: She could raise her legs several inches higher—the right one the easiest—than she’d been able to do this morning; obvious signs that the changes were beneficial. Yet she couldn’t move her right leg to the side at all—“There’s no action there at all,” she said, “as though something’s blocking it.” I said it meant other groups of big muscles were tightened in order to help support her while the first groups were rejuvenating themselves in safety. I also said that I thought the publication of God of Jane at last had served as a stimulus for the changes. I looked forward to more physical improvements for her.

(Now I explained to Jane what I considered to be “a gorgeous little illustration” of how unconscious hassles can go on in the psyche quite unsuspected by the conscious mind as the cause for physical difficulties: As stated, when I woke up this afternoon my stomach hurt. It’s been bothering me for the last few days, for no apparent reason; looking back, probably since Jack Joyce visited a few days ago about our making estimated tax payments to NY State. Interestingly enough, though, I made no such conscious connection until I began writing these notes. Then it came to consciousness: of course. Today I paid estimated federal and NYS taxes, and had planned to do so since seeing Jack. At once I checked with the pendulum—and got a great big yes —that was why my stomach had been acting up. My old bugaboo had returned, but very craftily so that I hadn’t been aware of it. I’d thought I’d managed to dismiss concerns about taxes, and actually have succeeded in doing so to a large degree—witness my physical well-being when paying taxes last April 15, for example. “Yet,” I said to Jane, “it shows how conflicts can keep going underground if you don’t watch it, and can be very damaging in the long run....”

Later editors did not see eye to eye with him about his work. He learned that his work must be sold in the marketplace if he wanted to continue writing. He tried unsuccessfully to publish several novels. (Long pause.) When Frederick Fell took the ESP book he was delighted. In a fashion Fell represented the next step upward from, say, pulp magazines. On the other hand, Fell did not go for the next projects that he either offered or had in mind—nor did Ace Books, who fell into the same category.

(Long pause at 9:07.) In many ways Tam and Ruburt got along quite well, even though Tam was a good deal younger, where before Ruburt’s editors had been people a good deal older than he. When the book was done Ruburt began another, along with several different attempts. Dreams, Astral Projection and ESP, I believe was to be the title. Ruburt signed for the book but had difficulty with his presentation, and it represented his indecisions, so Tam respectfully at first suggested large alterations.

These were not elements of behavior that seem particularly businesslike, however. Overall Ruburt felt quite competent, however, even in battling away at his advances two-thousand dollars at a time. He valued the relative permanency of the association, judging it in his mind against other situations in which time might otherwise be necessary to find a different publisher for each book, or an agent with whom Ruburt might feel rapport. Period.