“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You are in charged waters indeed with your discussion. Most of the ideas that you stated were highly pertinent, applying specifically to Ruburt’s situation —but very touchy for him. As a child, couched in the Catholic Church, his poetry was a method of natural expression, a creative art, and also the vehicle through which he examined himself, the world as he knew it, and the beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church.

His creative abilities led him beyond the precepts of that church, creatively speaking, at a fairly early age—though the actual breaking-off point did not occur in fact until he was in his teens. He was fairly young, then, however, when he first encountered conflicts between creativity as such, intuitive knowledge, and other people’s ideas about reality.

I have mentioned this on occasion—that he felt quite different from his contemporaries. Many gifted children do, and he used various kinds of protective coloring. No matter what he was taught in Catholic school or later in the public one, his intuitions, wedded to his creative capacities, led him to question established views.

Poetry was not considered fact, of course. It was a kind of concealed knowledge, apparent but not apparent. Later he tried straight novels, but when he let himself go his natural fiction fell into the form of fantasy, outside of the novel’s conventions into science fiction’s form—and at that time further away from the mainstream. He managed to get some of his work published, however, so that as he reached his early 30’s he had some apprenticeship under his belt.

(9:32.) Again, his natural abilities kept leading him, so it seemed, away from the straight novel framework into the science fiction format, where at that time he discovered that science fiction was not given any particular honor in the literary field. He decided to break away from it. Again he tried some straight novels. At the same time his abilities were examining the world at large, and your own worlds, as they were unfolding.

(A long, uncomfortable pause at 9:4l.) Ruburt could have said, “I bear no responsibility for Seth’s words, since they are not mine in the usual fashion.” On the other hand, while he did critically examine our material, he insisted in those terms “that he must be responsible for it,” in that he and everyone else must take normal responsibility in a fashion for “subconscious” actions or revelatory information.

He could have tried to publish the material in camouflaged form through fiction, and he was far more tempted to take such a line than perhaps you realized. Had one of his straight novels been accepted at that time, the story might be different somewhat. He recognized, however, the excellent quality in his own newer writings and in my own work also. He recognized the elements of mystery and creativity involved in the entire affair, and realized that he could not after all camouflage all of that, and so took the course upon which you both embarked.

He was very unsure of himself, since the entire dimension of activity was new, and at that time extremely rare in your country. The whole idea of being a “psychic” was completely new.

As he continued with his books and mine, he became more bewildered, in that there seemed to be no literary framework in which they were legitimately reviewed. It was as if he were considered a writer no longer, or as if the writing itself, while considered good enough, was also considered quite beside the point—of secondary concern, and in the psychic field the very word “creative” often has suspicious connotations. Many such people want the truth, in capital letters, in quite literal form, without creativity slurring the message, so to speak, or blurring the absolute edges of fact and fiction.

(Pause at 9:44.) There was a necessary period of time in which Ruburt and yourself experimented in several areas of psychic exploration, quite rightly picking and choosing those areas that suited you best, and ignoring others that you found for whatever reasons unsuitable. Ruburt quickly discovered that the public image of a psychic was quite different than that given to a writer, and so was the social image. As our readership grew, as you heard from readers or from some members of the media or whatever, it seemed to Ruburt that what he did best—have sessions, write his books—was not enough, that he was expected to do far more.

At the same time, he was to be denied his rightful place as a writer (as I’d said earlier), to defend this new position—a position moreover that seemed to change all the time—for beside my books there was Seven, Sumari, and later Cézanne and James. Each one flying in the face of one kind of conventional misunderstanding or another. He felt that he could hardly keep up with the spontaneous self: what was it about to do next?

Now in Mass Events and God of Jane he courageously went still further, letting it all hang out, as they say—a necessary part of his own growth and development. That is, he is better off for producing those two books than he would be otherwise.

At the same time, however, over a period of time he began to hold back creatively to some extent on inspiration itself, wondering where it might lead him, and this caused part of his physical difficulties (long pause), the physical blockage of course reflecting the inner one. Part of that blockage was also directly related to his ideas of work and responsibility.

(Pause at 10:05.) Even poetry did not seem to be work for a while, for example, nor did psychic activity for its own sake (Long pause.) All of this in its way fits together with other material—but no writers of merit, for example (intently), outside of Richard Bach, have written him to applaud his work, and to the writing community it seems he does not exist. The psychic community is a hodgepodge to which he feels no natural leanings, as far as its organizations or affiliations are concerned.

This is because his position is unique, in that he is dealing in areas that serve as thresholds, where ordinary creativity is accelerated and goes beyond itself, where fact turns into fiction, and fiction into fact. In those unknown realms, from which all psychological events are formed, he wants to fly ahead theoretically—that is, to delve through my books and through his own into ideas that still await, and feels somewhat angry because it seems that excellent theoretical material is overlooked by others to a large extent, while being used as a Band-Aid to help the current problems of the people.

He has held back his inspiration, though, out of confusion, wondering about experiences that cannot be put directly into beneficial use, and also out of concern, again, that the spontaneous self and its intuitional insights will put him in further conflict with the world.

When you want to be a landscape painter, at least you know what a landscape is. You have your brushes and colors to work with. In Ruburt’s case, there are no definite boundaries, in certain ways, to the dimensions of that creativity —no specific methods, no specific pathways, and it is for that reason that he tried to exert such balancing force.

Experiment is a poor word—excursions—into the library while the two of you sit at the table, for example, would be excellent. Your joint dream episodes are always of benefit. The encouragement of such inner mobility also releases the bodily mechanisms. It is safe to move: he can get off dead center.

(Long pause at 10:20.) The public image is bound to make him feel inferior if he takes it too seriously. That always stimulates his idea of responsibility. It is his public image as a psychic, of course, not as a writer, that here is the issue. In a fashion we are delivering source materials for each person to interpret and enjoy. It may serve as the source material for several different kinds of disciplines, or schools or whatever. (Pause.) It will serve to inspire others, but each person is responsible for his or her own life, and Ruburt does not have a private clientele, nor is he temperamentally suited to use his psychic abilities to track people down or to serve as a therapist. That narrows his abilities too specifically and holds him down from other kinds of explorations for which he is highly equipped and quite proficient.

(“How is he going to come to terms with the lack of public recognition that he wants so much as a writer?”)

That is only a part of the picture. He was not particularly thinking of any great fame to begin with, but the just-enough recognition—

—of work well done. That recognition in a fashion comes from several fronts—from people in all walks of life, from professors, members of different professions rather—than specifically from other writers (pause), and in time that situation itself will improve. It is the public image as he thinks he has as a psychic that bothers him, more than the one he feels is lacking as a writer.