“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Today I had to go to the drugstore and food shopping, on separate trips. I also raked leaves for an hour and helped Peggy, our nurse, with Jane. And those activities lead into the crux of today’s session and events.

(Once again a crisis situation has come about. It’s now 8:30 PM. At about 7 PM, we were eating supper and watching Buck Rogers on TV, when Jane had another panic attack. This one was more extensive. It also took me a bit to realize that it was starting to show itself in the form of hallucinations or disorientation. Right after she’d finished eating, Jane began to ramble, talking about making impossible verbal rituals that she had to carry out before she could eat her ice cream for dessert. These periods were contrasted with examples of lucidity: “I’m going to make it,” although such periods were far in the minority compared to her ramblings about performing these rituals before she could perform any meaningful physical act like eating dessert. I cannot really explain what she said; it was too rapid and varied, and I had no notebook handy. She tried to make sense out of uncommon sense data. At one time Jane thought she was on the commode in the bedroom, and began to pull up her blouse. Another time she thought she was in her writing room while I did the dishes.

(One of my first thoughts was that the dreaded time had come—that no matter what Seth had been saying lately, or what Jane and I thought about her getting better, she was actually worse off than ever. I envisioned calling Dr. Kardon tomorrow, to get Jane into the hospital—a prospect both of us shrank from indeed. I thought that even my wife would be forced to agree to such a move.

(Our time was running out. If, as Seth has repeatedly said lately, Jane was clearing her psyche, then I feared that she’d begun her task too late, mentally and physically. As Peggy J had said today, Jane needed nursing care that neither she nor I could provide now. That leaves but one alternative, and my thought and fear is that if Jane goes into the hospital again, the sessions are over—for good. And who knows what the hell will happen to us for the rest of our lives? Of such ingredients are cosmic farces made, I thought. It can be seen that I was having a hard time to keep from falling into the deep pessimism I’d experienced not long ago, and seemingly had rebounded from.

(Just last night Jane sat up in her chair all night—literally—letting me put her on the commode at about 2 AM. I did so again at 7 AM, and she then sat up until Peggy arrived at 2 PM. Her legs are swollen like tree trunks from the fluid that has collected in them; her toes are like sausages. I’m very distressed at all of this. When I had to change the dressings on her ass this morning, before putting her back in her chair, I saw that the sores were worse than ever—an angry, irritated red—and spreading. Such is my wife’s pitiable state at this time.

(Peggy and I had a couple of hurried conversations this afternoon, concerning Jane’s condition, and before leaving Peggy had her say to Jane as we sat at the card table. I can tell that she’s appalled at my wife’s condition, and said outright that she’s not doing Jane any good at all any more. She wants me to call Dr. Kardon to come to the house to examine Jane, saying we owe it to Dr. K., who couldn’t know the extent of Jane’s symptoms these days. “She deserves to be informed.” Of course. I told Peggy I’d think it over, and we’ll probably make a decision this weekend. The only thing that’s stopping me at the moment is Seth’s latest comments on the bedsores clearing themselves up automatically as Jane releases inner motion. This may be a case of pure wishful thinking, for I don’t understand how the sores can possibly heal themselves without outside help—possibly even surgery—of some sort.

(Jane refused to lie down this morning while I went to Gerould’s, so I had to get her out of bed, after changing the dressings, within 10 minutes. As I sit here writing this evening, her legs are fatter than ever. Yet she herself first came up with the insight tonight that the panic was expressing itself through her disorientations and/or hallucinations. A very important point, a creative insight. She got mad at me briefly just now when I demanded to know if I would really get a session tonight: “Bob, I’m trying as hard as I can. I said you’d get one. You’ll get one.” Yet the next moment she was back hallucinating. A few minutes ago she’d told me that she had to have the session in order to get rid of the anxiety-hallucination complex.

(8:28. I was surprised when Seth abruptly came through just as I finished the above notes. Jane’s voice was good, her head down, eyes closed; she swayed to her left often. I was about to note that the session was probably a last gasp attempt to learn something important, to keep going on our own, before our world began to fall apart.

(“This thing has almost got the best of me,” I’d told Peggy this afternoon, “after 15 years.” I didn’t mean I hadn’t played my own role in all of it, for obviously I had. I explained to Peggy our insurance options. I stressed, however, that Jane’s challenges were still primarily psychological, and that her “cure” lay in that direction. I devoutly hope and trust that this session will mark the beginning of something very good. I demanded a session, I’d told Jane, if it was at all possible.)

(8:30. “I’m about ready to fall off the bed,” Jane said, going back into her disoriented state at once. Actually, she was leaning again to her left in the chair.

(I was pleased at the way the session was going—and indeed amazed that Jane could manage to pull it off at all, given her circumstances. She said no more, just smoked. The TV was on, without sound. The cats slept beside the waterbed in the living room. The room was lit with a soft yellow glow.

(8:50. “I need to raise my head,” Jane said. She had indeed been speaking for Seth with her head bowed low. I helped her with a hand: “Look at me....”)

(8:54. Once again I helped Jane lift her head level with mine. and lean back against her pillow. She was also hallucinating again, wondering if it was safe to sit up and relax.

(“You’re doing better,” I said. Jane hasn’t been able to cry, although I have the definite feeling that she’d like to.

(9:07. Jane still spoke for Seth with her head down for the most part. Voice strong but muffled, eyes usually closed. “I found your face,” she said then, staring at me straight on. “I wanted to hold my head up—do something—because I’m so scared.” I helped her lean back against the pillow in her chair.

(9:14. “He’s right. I’ll try to.... I want to cry, but I need to get more comfortable.” I changed the pillow at her back, which helped. “I feel like screaming,” Jane said, “but it scares me....” I lit a cigarette for her. The moment had passed, I thought.

(“Because I’m going to have to let go or do something pretty quick.... Boy, am I scared.” Jane said this often. I rubbed her back low down on her spine. She was very restless. I wasn’t sure whether or not she’d let the tears come through. “I’ve got to put myself out, like I did the other night,” she said at 9:28. I wasn’t sure of what she meant by that. But it seemed that now she would try to shut off the crying, or sidetrack it, at this time. The charge, built up and/or saved since childhood, must be terrific. Ordinarily the crying would hurt me, but now, this time, I really wanted her to let it come through.

(9:30. “I’ll have to try something different now,” she said. “Try to think of something.... I’ve got to get up some—I know that—change position or something. You can help me there.” She kept repeating this until I grew irritated: “How in hell am I going to help you change position? You can’t move.” Finally, I pulled her cushion back in her chair as she sat on it. I do this occasionally. The movement, less than half an inch, I’d say, did change physical relationships of body to chair. Jane sat quietly, head down, eyes closed.

(I moved her in her chair over to the dining room table where we eat breakfast and watch TV. “That’s a good thought,” she said. Then: “I’m going to pretend I’m getting up in the morning. Can you turn the TV on a little?” I did—to Alec Guinness in the excellent TV movie, Smiley’s People, on channel 7. Once again I thought Jane looked like she might want to cry, but the moment passed. Now I sat on the opposite side of her, and she leaned away from me. “All I can say is, make believe you’re getting me up.”

(I didn’t really know what to do for her. “If I don’t make it, I’m going to die,” Jane burst out. “And I want to make it—I don’t want to die....”

(9:46. I moved her back to the other table. The TV was turned up. “I’m trying so hard to get back over there,” Jane said, “in a certain fashion....”

(10:01. Jane leaned so far to her left in the chair that I had to support her in it lest she overbalance the chair. She was still very restless. I thought the session was probably over.

(By 11 PM I’d moved Jane in her chair many times from position to position at each table. “Please, Bob, move me, move me, but don’t swing me so far out into the room, out in the middle like that....” But I had to, I explained, in order to be sure her chair legs cleared the table legs. Jane leaned far to her left again and again, yet didn’t topple over. Very gradually she seemed to calm down. There was a little shouting at me—very little—which I didn’t record, but no tears.

(The movements in the chair had to represent something in themselves—a shifting of attitudes—what else I wasn’t sure that quickly. Jane’s fear of being out in the center of the rug, away from a table she could lean on for support, could also represent her fears of abandonment, the casting away of old beliefs and fears. Often she insisted she knew what she was saying to me, but at times I felt that she didn’t, and even that some of it represented vocal dreaming. I did think that it was all therapeutic.

(But the notes drew themselves to a close. At 11:30 PM I gave her aspirin and one of the pain pills Hal Williams had sent her. Jane passively accepted them. “Don’t you have to go to the john by now?” I asked. She nodded. I wheeled her into the bedroom. I had a time getting her on the commode, and then into bed; half the dressings were pulled lose.

(Jane said little. She lay curled up almost like a fetus on her left side. It was after 1 AM before I got to bed. At 3 AM I was in to check up on her. At 6 AM she called me to get her up, and I rushed through the morning’s usual chores so that I could get started on typing this material. I put her in bed at about 11:30 AM, and got her up at noon. I’d made it clear after breakfast that she was to lay down for at least a short time each morning, as well as in the afternoon.

(I should add that I could easily identify with Jane’s feelings of panic. In lesser degree I used to get them when I rode the bus to work at Artistic Card Co. Sometimes on that morning ride I’d swear that I was having a heart attack, and would die any minute—most unpleasant—and excellent warning signs. I never did see a doctor.)