“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Like the last deleted session, this one is Jane’s own dictation, not Seth’s. She’d mentioned doing some yesterday, but it hadn’t worked out. “I don’t know what to talk about,” she said at 11:05 AM, “now that you’re here. Something on Rich Bed, or just generally about those feelings I had yesterday after reading your introduction for Dreams....” When I mentioned that she could dictate something for the intro she said she couldn’t—not without reading it again. I didn’t advise that, for yesterday morning she’d ended up very depressed after pursuing it right after breakfast. Her mood had been very despairing for most of the day. “It’s devastating, I guess,” she said about the intro.

(She added: “Now I don’t know whether the hospital experience was worth it or not.” We agreed her energy wasn’t any better than it had seemed before she went in, but at least Dr. Kardon’s treatment was supposed to be in the process of remedying that. [Dr. K is to see us tomorrow, to take blood for a thyroid test that may signal that it’s okay to raise the amount of supplement Jane is now getting.]

(11:12 AM.) Last night (Jane said) I felt great when Robbie kissed me, and actually I slept quite well, both in my chair and bed. I felt fairly hopeful this morning, for example, yet now I feel quite sad again (with a tremolo), and I feel as if I want to express myself—but when I try there is some strange block.

She called me all kinds of names. (Long pause.) I tried to understand but felt half-doped—indeed. Maybe even half-duped, because I could never figure out when her crying outrage, her screaming anguish, were real expressions of nearly unbearable moments, or when she was acting. She could do that too.

But I thought, “My God, I should be able to forgive my mother anything, being in that state, with a child beside.” No wonder she raged and screamed and struck out—yet I certainly, as far as I know, don’t hold myself to blame, since I understood as well as I could. And helped in whatever ways I could. But surely my attitude as well as hers must have helped build a wall between us.

(11:28.) I had told her a few days before the suicide attempt that I was leaving. I’m not sure, but I think I told her. We had a salesman who used the place as a business address, and he was there that night. I don’t remember much about him, except that he wouldn’t help. He got in his car as fast as he could and drove away, leaving mother raging on the bedside.

I took off with Walt on the motorcycle, and all the way across the country in my mind I heard her yell, “bitch, bitch, bitch.” Yet I’m certain I didn’t feel guilty. I was scared to death of her. For that matter, I was somewhat frightened of Walt, who threatened to leave me when he got angry in a new town we happened to be in, but we made it to the west coast.

She had some jumbled psychic abilities, I suppose. She was great for reading tea leaves now and then, and I used to think how strange it was that she could do that yet couldn’t walk. She told me that sometime she walked in the night, and that some night she’d turn on the gas jets and kill us both. I really don’t know if it’s such a good idea to go over such memories or not, but since they came to mind I decided finally to have Rob write them down for me.

(I told Jane that as I listened to it some of the material sounded contradictory. That is, the young girl must have had some feelings of guilt for leaving her prostrate mother, etc. I thought that was perfectly natural, but extending those feelings for the next 30 years would seem to be too much in nature’s scheme—as I’ve said before, it doesn’t seem to me that nature necessarily wants things to work that way, while making perfectly possible the fact that they can, if one chooses. This may be a case of things being redeemed on a “higher” level, I suppose—reminding me of material I’ve been dealing with recently in the intro for Seth/Jane’s Dreams.