“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.

(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.

First of all, the anxiety rises with its own rhythm (pause), expressing at this time the anxious patterns that lie beneath, serving both as messages of the nature of the stress, and containing also other deeper material that has, in a fashion, accumulated. You are not comfortable. Arrange yourselves and I will return.

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.

(“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.

(“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.

(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.