“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The call was over our speakerphone, so Jane could hear SC when he said that her Seven III “was charming,” and that he liked it very much. He wants to see more, and I explained what Jane has ready and has yet to do. I didn’t say anything about Seth’s Dreams. Jane was very pleased that SC liked Seven, since I learned that she’d been worrying about this. She wants to check the next five chapters before sending them to Tam, who will send them to SC when he edits them, but she hasn’t done any work on them recently. She still sleeps in her chair most of the day.

(I replied that if I was involved in that fashion, then I had to be a late link in a long chain of such fears. I wasn’t denying that I could be so involved. I said Jane’s mother had been abandoned by her father, that her grandparents had also been separated through bitter argument, and that Jane herself had often been threatened with such a fate by her mother. Also—because of the nature of her own psychic work, Jane must feel abandoned by the literary establishment—and even society in general—no matter if certain people do buy her books. She’s far from being accepted by the ruling elite of our country, at least at this time. It all fit together, I said. All of this is very simplified from our discussion, which must have lasted a couple of hours. Neither of us slept.

(“Is it the sinful self that’s doing this?” I asked. “Why hasn’t it learned better by now? I can’t think of anything in the world that’s worth it—literally.” I said a lot more. It all sounded good, but would have little effect, I thought, since it hadn’t in years past. The self-destructive behavior was much more advanced now, though, and I could only hope and trust that my dear wife’s feelings of panic were an attempt on her personality’s part to at least discharge some of the dangerous emotional charge that must have accumulated over the years, while being repressed. This would be much preferred instead of a projection of fear into the future, I said. If this were the case, the feelings of panic were a good sign, and could be quite helpful. But I was as baffled as ever, I said, that the personality would put the poor body in such a position that it couldn’t be at peace either sitting up or laying down. It all seemed to be so self-defeating that I had trouble visualizing what other portions of the personality might be getting out of it.

(“I could guess at some of those other motivations,” I said, “but they’d only be guesses....” I tried to cling to the recent hopeful statements Seth has been making recently. “At the same time,” I said, “what’s he waiting for in giving us the information we need? Is there something he’d say in a session that could be any worse than what we’re dealing with everyday in our lives? It could hardly shock us any more than what’s happening now.” It hardly seemed likely. Jane said she’d do the best she could in the session tonight. I tried to reassure her before I started supper, but was so upset that it was very difficult.

(Jane felt better after supper. During her upset she’d mentioned going back to Sayre to live several times, “where we started out.” I didn’t think she wished to be 26 years old again, but I also didn’t know what the move might do for us now—that is, as far as helping restore her health went. I agreed that it could help, though. I must admit that if I’d had to guess at any upcoming major changes in our lives, moving back to Sayre would have been the last on the list. We haven’t even been there for three years.