“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The insight, such as it was, offered many clues to our present situation. I asked that Seth discuss it if she held a session tonight. Jane had been quite blue after sleeping for a couple of hours late this afternoon—and after she’d already slept for two hours this morning. It wasn’t that her psychic work, and the books, weren’t good, I said, or that they didn’t help people, but that they didn’t fit into the world as she saw it. Seth himself had referred to her dilemma in the excerpt I’ve taken from the private session for January 26, 1981, very well.

(She’s been sleeping much better, but with interspersed bouts of restlessness and discomfort in her backside and legs. Right now she was also uncomfortable as she waited for Seth to come through. Earlier today I’d told her I realized how cleverly she’d engineered her activities so that she didn’t go to the john very often. Right then, she hadn’t been to the bathroom since noon. “I’d go if I had to,” she protested, but I answered that she’d simply trained her body to wait as long as possible for such natural acts; then she could avoid all the discomfort of getting into the bathroom and on the john, etc. I added that I supposed now she’d work it so that she only went to the john once before going to bed after the session. I wondered if she was trying to set a record for holding it. By way of contrast, I wanted to ask Seth to comment on the good things her psychic abilities have accomplished. But right at this time she can barely get from her chair to sit on the john or the bed—literally.)

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.

There are multitudinous elements operating against such an initiation in your society, and particularly these operated back in those days when the sessions first began. There is a natural desire to want the respect of one’s fellows, to avoid social taboos or ostracism. Those issues were encountered at that time because Ruburt’s abilities thrust them through their surfaces. His abilities grew despite the society’s inhibiting factors. It did take Ruburt some time to fully understand how his work might perhaps be regarded. The fact that I could also write books was of the greatest benefit, of course (dryly, almost with a smile) —and no one was more surprised than Ruburt to discover that I could do so.

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.

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.

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.

—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.