“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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.

(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.

(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.

Now: we will see what we can do with what we have. (Glasses off.)

What he needs immediately at this point—which you have already been providing—are “bandages” of honest affection—for these help allay some of the original childhood panic, which rises in different form. He does seem to have it well within his head, however, that the time to change is now, and he is determined to do so. Some of the old panic is also threatened, of course, and hence shows itself in altered form at different times. Do remember this. Again, take a very brief break, and I will continue.

Your own explanation of events from our material, as understood by you, will also now be of important import, as you express them to Ruburt during uneasy times. Take a break.

He needs to relieve himself with some crying. Let the occasion be taken care of now in its place.

(“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.”

(“Where you are,” she said cryptically. I thought she might be getting ready to erupt, but instead she sat finally with her face almost down to the tabletop. Then: “I’m safe here in the chair, but I’ve got to get back over there somehow.” She meant leaning to her left. But she was very restless. “All right, I’ll see what I can do this time.... I do it every morning—I’ll try to do it now,” she said, restlessly shifting from side to side in the chair. More and more I was concerned about getting her off her ass and into bed, but I was afraid to mention it yet. I turned off the television’s sound.

(10:15. By now my wife had thrashed back and forth in her chair—not violently—telling me often that I had to help her; she certainly acted disoriented. “Don’t bother writing now,” she said, but when I stopped nothing came of it—no crying, or even talk. I moved her chair to the spot at which I sat at the card table, as she directed. A minute later I moved her back to her usual place at the dining room table, again as she directed. Silence. The movie on TV’s channel 2 was a bloody tale of youths being killed one by one by wicked, deranged men, near monsters, in dark summer woods.

(“I’m worried about being alive 15 minutes from now,” she said after a pause. “I really am. I’m scared. Please don’t write those notes now.”

(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.

(“And I’ll tell you one thing,” I said, “never again are you going to sit up like that for all of those hours. You’re going to be nicer to your body from now on. No more are you going to sit up like that. Never.”