“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.

(Speaking of Prentice-Hall, today Jane received her first copy of God of Jane—a handsome-looking volume that I hope does well as the years pass. We’d been wondering if Prentice-Hall was going to stick to its schedule in bringing the book out early in June, and lo the book arrived without any fanfare at all. I told Jane I think it’s her best book yet.

(This afternoon, when I returned from running errands—paying state and federal taxes, etc.—Jane told me that she was having all kinds of “weird things” happening in her back and legs, as though various portions of her anatomy were loosening at uneven rates. Her balance and double vision were affected too. We slept together during a nap. I woke up with my stomach bothering me, and Jane, half crying, with a continuing of the strange, intensified feelings of uncontrolled motion/extra-slow motion combined and manifested in her back and legs. She worried about not being able to get from the bed to the chair to the john, but did well nevertheless.

(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....”

Now: about Prentice. I do not want to lay stress upon any negative effects, but to explain differences of opinion and behavior. The initial relationship began some time ago, of course, and in a fashion had its own background as far as Ruburt was concerned. When he wrote short stories, for example, he was forced to search for a publisher for each one—a magazine. He learned to deal with the various editors by mail. He sold most of his stories to Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine when Boucher was the editor.

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.

Ruburt himself recognized the book’s deficiencies, and he and Tam together hit upon the idea of switching my book, Seth Speaks, which was not yet contracted for, instead of Dreams. (Long pause.) Ruburt was therefore impressed to the ears with the necessity of getting a book to market, and of the importance of a decent working relationship with an editor, particularly in the uncertainties of even usual free-lancing writing were taken into consideration.

Ruburt’s subject matter, however, was not routine, particularly back in those times. He felt that its unique nature meant that it could be quite difficult to sell. When he and Tam began to reach a relatively workable relationship, therefore, he began to value this more and more. He felt that in the beginning Tam stood up for him at Prentice several times. And Tam, it seemed, kept his hands away from the manuscript itself in the one way that Ruburt clearly understood: he did not generally change the copy. As the years went by Tam and Ruburt arrived at certain methods of operation that suited Ruburt personally, and that were understood by both of them.

(Long pause at 9:19.) These methods of operation involved certain evidences of play, some social chatter, mutual trust, and left open the doors to a certain kind of unpredictable pattern of development—a pattern in which, for example, Tam could recognize the latent book in the Emir dream, and help fire Ruburt to write it, even though eventually Prentice was not the publisher.

Now overall he wanted an attractive package, of course, yet to him the book was in the copy mainly. (Long pause.) The Bantam photograph covers did displease him, but in a fashion he did not expect any more from the mass paperback situation. For some time he felt competent then in those business dealings. He felt loyalty to Tam, who he felt was loyal to him. At the same time he did not idealize Tam, and was well aware of some of his natural failings.

He trusted you in the manuscript itself of a Seth book to provide the accuracy of record, in which he felt he was himself relatively deficient, and also to contribute the background material he felt so necessary, yet which he found difficult himself, and he valued of course your loyalty, support, and inspiration.

(Long pause.) The problem with the contracts and the entire translation affair bothered you both deeply. Ruburt felt at times that you were too severe on occasion in your dealings with Tam for a while. (Long pause.) The entire situation bothered him deeply. He valued the relationship with Prentice (long pause), and he valued the idea of distributing the books in foreign lands, even if that venture meant misunderstandings or quite deliberate translations such as the shortening of one book, feeling that Prentice, while negligent, was not deliberately negligent, and that the situation would be righted and the material restored.

That involved the deletion of copy, you see. He agreed with you thoroughly there. Though he did not agree about your opinion of Prentice per se, involving the difficulty, he blamed the foreign publisher. He felt, however, that some of your own anger against the foreign publisher was directed at Tam. Much of this involves simple differences in temperament. He did not deny the fact of your own visually acute behavior. He felt stupid when you became annoyed at typos or misspellings or whatever that he did not even perceive until you mentioned them. He felt between you and Prentice and Tam at various stages, of course, and did not feel certain of his old capacity to set the relationship right. He also began to distrust his own earlier methods of dealing with the situation.