“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane said she’d first called me for the session at 8:20, but I had been working in the studio closet and hadn’t heard her. She called again at 8:40. It was 9:00 by the time I got settled—and she still didn’t “feel him around”—meaning Seth, of course. She added that she was having the session because she supposed she ought to.

(Jane had reread my list of questions for Seth, based on this last group of sessions, and referred to often. After supper we’d talked about questions 2 and 13, the same ones we’d asked that Seth discuss in another recent private session; he hadn’t done so yet, though. And, of course, his material throughout these sessions can’t but help touch upon various facets pertaining to the questions. So upon that premise, the questions are being discussed all the time.)

Ruburt’s symptoms are not his challenge this time, as you asked (in question 13), but the philosophical connotations behind his difficulties certainly do involve his challenges this time.

Your country, for all of its obvious errors, still is one in which such issues can best be worked out both philosophically and practically. Now in both of your lives, you have managed to express creative abilities to advantage, to draw upon these not only at isolated periods of your lives, or in partial form, but in such a fashion that they have provided you with continuing frameworks of self-discovery and creativity—so when you are counting accomplishments, remember that (in reference to question 2.

(9:49.) There are qualitative leaps that exist impossible to bridge with the intellect alone that separate, say, well-meaning, adequate-enough attempts toward artistic achievement, and works that are of themselves naturally artistic exhibitions. A lifetime of concentrated effort and intellectual concern alone will not, for example, turn a poor poet into a good one. Techniques may improve, the work may become more polished, but the quality of the poetry itself is what is important.

Exactly what were the mechanisms of such defense systems, as individuals used them? Nations use them in the same way. All of this can be quite difficult to explain. It would be highly unusual for Ruburt to have been untouched by the belief systems of his times—particularly if he had set out to change them. (Pause.) You are not simply trying to look at the world differently, for example, or to change a hypothetical reality, but to creatively bring about some version of a creative and artistic vision that results not simply in greater poems or paintings, but in greater renditions of reality (all very intently.

This does not mean that he was fated to do any such thing, that it would not be done more easily in other fashions, but you can see some correspondence there by looking at his (underlined) paintings, and the vivid use of contrasting colors that are not subtle. This is of course one way of looking at the entire issue. The same philosophical dilemma, again, lies at a basis for your mass events. Ruburt has been using television programs and such cultural data as a basis for some of his own dreams. In such a way he sees his own personal situation more clearly—but he also sees the world situation as it reflects the same kind of philosophical questions.

Ruburt then has indeed been involved in working out his dilemmas, both in their private and public nature through the use of such dream techniques, the subsequent feelings aroused in the daytime, and the intuitive resolutions and insights that then occur. He has not “given up” the book sessions, by the way, but suspended them for these sessions, to give you more time, but they are merely in abeyance.

(We discussed Seth’s reference on page 85 to Jane fearing that others might actually look upon her as dangerous because of her abilities. At first I’d thought this a new insight on Seth’s part, but we decided that it wasn’t, that he’d covered this ground in other material from a variety of viewpoints. There’s something about his simple statement, though, that is intriguing—that others, in addition to considering that Jane was antireligious, say, would also think of her as dangerous.)