“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(She’d obviously, I thought, expected recognition by her peers in the writing field when she matured, with her obvious talents. Yet she’d found this deep yearning snatched away with the advent of her psychic abilities—goodbye to all of those accepted reviews, the critical success, even the money, that would go along with the conventional acceptable public image of the successful writer of good quality poetry and/or fiction. I said that most “successful?” poetry and fiction might not penetrate very deeply into the human condition, compared with the understanding her own psychic gifts offered, but it would have been safe and accepted by her peers. What more could anyone ask of life, I demanded ironically?

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?

(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.

(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?”)

—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.