“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Ruburt’s nightmare experience (of March 8) is a beautiful example of the kind of explosive emotional content that many people carry, fairly hidden, representing certain taboos, translated of course in individualistic manners.

Many people’s economic well-being of course was dependent upon the church in one way or another, and in reincarnational terms many millions of people alive today were familiar then with such conditions. The nunneries and monasteries were long-time social and religious institutions, some extremely rigorous, while others were religiously oriented in name only. But there is a long history of the conflicts between creative thought, heresy, excommunication, or worse, death. All of those factors were involved in one way or another in the fabric of Ruburt’s nightmare material.

(Pause at 9:15.) Again, many people carry the same kind of emotional charge. Ruburt’s fears, as expressed in that material, can be encountered, of course. It is when they are hidden that difficulties arise, because their charge is then added to other issues.

The church was quite real to Ruburt as a child, through the priests who came [to the house] regularly, through direct contact with the religious [grade] school, and the support offered to the family. Ruburt’s very early poetry offended Father Boyle, who objected to its themes, and who burned his books on the fall of Rome, so he had more than a hypothetical feeling about such issues. Many of those fears originated long before the sessions, of course, and before he realized that there was any alternative at all between, say, conventional religious beliefs and complete disbelief in any nature of divinity.

He [Ruburt] was afraid that if he went too far he would discover that he had catapulted himself into a realm where both answers and questions were meaningless, and in which no sense was to be found. To do that is one thing, but to take others with you would be, he felt, unforgivable—and in the framework of those fears, as his work became better known he became even more cautious.

By such tactics the church managed to hold on to an entire civilization for centuries. (Long pause.) Ruburt well knew even as a child that such structures had served their time, and his poetry provided a channel through which he could express his own views as he matured. Later the old fears, if they surfaced, were not encountered. They seemed beneath him, unworthy or cowardly—but in any case their validity as feelings was not recognized or understood.

Ruburt did initiate a small religious order in the 16th Century, in France, and he was in love for many years with the man he met in his dream—a cleric. The love was not consummated, but it was passionate and enduring nonetheless on both of their parts.

(Long pause at 9:37.) Ruburt had considerable difficulty with church doctrine even then, and the rules of the order as actually carried out through practice were later considered to hold their own seeds of heresy. Ruburt was forced to leave the order that he had initiated, as an old woman. He left with a few female companions who were also ostracized, and died finally of starvation. It was a time when unconventional patterns of thought, of unconventional expression, could have dire consequences.

The name Normandy comes to mind, and the name Abelard. The dream came to remind Ruburt of those connections, but also to remind him that his life even then was enriched by a long-held love relationship. The two corresponded frequently, met often, and in their ways conspired to alter many of the practices that were abhorrent yet held as proper church policy.

Some of Ruburt’s short notes, written after the nightmare experience (and which I’ve asked Jane to copy for this record), show that he is beginning to put that material into its proper reference. Those fears, however, have been pertinent, since they stood between old beliefs and new ones—that is, they prevented him from taking full advantage of his newer knowledge, and of the abilities and good intent of the spontaneous self.

Both the nightmare experience and the dream were partially triggered by our last session (on March 4), of course, and served to show Ruburt why he had begun to cut down on some (underlined) of his own psychic experience, inspiration, and expression—a policy reflected in the repressed nature of bodily expression.

In the dream his grandfather revives. His grandfather survived in a suit too large, which means that there was still room for him to grow (as I’d suggested to Jane ). He [Ruburt] had a small experience of hearing a voice speak in his mind [yesterday]—a voice of comfort, all he remembered of quite legitimate assistance he received from other personalities connected with the French life, that came as a result of the French dream.