“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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.

(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.”

(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....”

(10:15. 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.

(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.