“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Today Jane called John Nelson and Tam, and learned where I am to sign the Seven contract, and that Prentice-Hall would be receptive to her third Seven novel. She was also reminded by Tam that Pocket Books has bought the paperback rights to the second Seven, which we had quite forgotten about. The advance was cut considerably from that given for the first Seven also. Pocket Books hasn’t scheduled Seven #2 for publication yet, as far as we know.

Illnesses are in their way inadequate methods of solving problems. Ruburt had strong elements of personality still caught up in the beliefs of what I have called the Sinful Self. At the same time, for many reasons, he had the idea that he was expected to be not merely a well-adapted natural person, but a kind of superself, solving other people’s problems, being a public personality, a psychic performer, and so forth. There was a vast gulf between those two extremes—one that was bound to cause strain and effort and misunderstandings.

To some extent Ruburt’s panic is also the result of trying to live up to an impossible image, while forgetting his own personal background, and by expecting himself to behave as if that background was unimportant. (Long pause.) He was a person taught to believe that expression was somehow wrong. Despite that he became an excellent writer. He uses expression constantly. He expected himself to be a public personality—that is, he felt the responsibility to be one, as if that had always been a goal, when of course it had not been.

(Long pause at 9:58.) He had been shy with people, shy about reading his own poetry, though determined to do so, yet he felt that he should become this public personality, or to perform. I keep trying to think of examples so that you know what I mean. The entire idea of responsibility has been over-stressed. The creative work was expected not only to be creative, imaginative, intuitive, to contain the highest elements of conceptual thought, but must also be capable of solving the most concrete physical problem, tuned with some magical tuning fork so that it could serve almost any purpose required of it.

He may not want to be a public personality, but he does enjoy expression. He does enjoy his own brand of teaching. Part of all this is due to the original aspect of your work itself, which does not have any well-defined definitions.