“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane held no session yesterday, December 5, but I’d like to note a couple of items. Jane had to have her catheter changed three times while I was there yesterday. Obviously, it didn’t work right the first two times—just before lunch at about 1:50, then after lunch at about 2:30. Jane ate well in between all the action. though. The last effort was made at 4:35, and succeeded without much effort, by LuAnn and Lorrie.

(The main thing I want to note is that after the catheter had been changed for the last time, Jane very nearly turned over on her left side by herself. This is very important. She thinks LuAnn may have given her an initial shove to get her going. At the same time, Jane doesn’t know how she did it—the action evidently was the way it should be, largely automatic. I heard her exclaim over the feat at the time, without paying a lot of attention, since I’d shoved my chair back into a corner to get out of the way while the staff worked on Jane; I was doing mail. But this is quite an advancement for my wife.

(Tuesday. Last night I had a very interesting, and at the same time almost a bothersome dream: I dreamed that while I was with Margaret and Joe Bumbalo and their son John, I discovered I was a latent homosexual. I don’t know how I found out. Margaret said something to me like, “There now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” as all of us sat on a swing on their front porch. In the dream also were an Oriental-looking mother, not too old, with a nice-looking daughter who had beautiful slanting eyes and a very quiet demeanor. It was the kind of dream one returns to several times, and I assume I’ve forgotten portions of it. When I got up at 6:15, with the dream still on my mind, I thought at first that it might have reincarnational overtones, yet I didn’t really think so.

(The day was warmer—40 degrees—but very damp, and ended up raining heavily by the time I left for home. Room 330, however, was cold all afternoon, even after the heating man tinkered with the thermostat. For most of the afternoon Jane consented to having the cloth from Switzerland thrown over her.

(At intervals all afternoon we could hear, even with the door to 330 shut, a woman called Louise call out endlessly, “Help me, help me, help me, help me, help me....” Over and over. I found her cries both fascinating and distracting, as I wondered what kind of mental mechanisms were responsible for her behavior. We’d heard yesterday that she was bothering many people on the floor. The voice seemed at times to be merely an automatic, unaware reaction to whatever obscure mental processes were going on within her mind or brain—vocal signals broadcast out into the world, perhaps without meaning to others but probably of significance to their originator on certain levels. I should have asked Seth to comment.

At the same time, Joe holds you in fond regard—yet your abilities also were not those that he traditionally assigned to manhood: men did not paint pictures. You were aware of these considerations, and they formed part of the basis for your dream.

Joe’s dilemma reminded you of the attitudes of your own parents, and you sympathized with John. At the same time, you recognized that John’s job as a waiter also involved him with nourishment—that is, physically and symbolically—and the dream was simply restating the fact that the intuitive faculties, often considered solely female, actually involved those qualities of creativity and emotion that held family units together. Promoting life within art, and physical life also as it is generally understood.

(This attitude also fit in with that which Joe had expressed to me during last fall’s World Series in baseball: Looking at the ballplayers with their long hair, mustaches and beards, Joe had asked me where the youth of America was. “You’re looking at it,” I told him. Joe had said it wasn’t right for young men to let themselves go that way. I don’t think he was aware of the humor of the whole situation. I’d described it to Jane at the time.