“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Yesterday morning I took a call from Nancy Overton and Saul Cohen, who evidently will have the job of shepherding Jane’s work through Prentice-Hall, now that Tam has left. The call was in response to my letter to Nancy on October 22, re Tam telling Jane that Pocket Books had published the paperback edition of Seven II. Not so, SC explained, citing the mix-up surrounding Tam’s leaving and his own efforts to learn what was going on in the new job.

(“I was picking up the name just now,” she said. Momentarily she’d dozed at the card table; she got the name several times, just as she spelled it. I said I’d make a note of it.

(At about 4 PM I quit work, and began to prepare for my nap. I wanted Jane to lie down also, since she’d sat in her chair since about 7:30 this morning. She hadn’t even gone to the john—the same behavior she showed last Saturday, when a session had been held that night. Now Jane told me however, that she was feeling “panicky.” She’d been dozing in the chair and woke up feeling that way. It got worse. I could see that she had no intention of lying down. “God, I’m scared,” she said several times, but couldn’t say why she felt that way, at first. Then she said she thought her fright was connected to her fear of abandonment as a child—and that she would finally make life so miserable for me that I’d leave her.

(“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.

(At 9 PM I sat at the card table adding to these notes while we waited for the session. Jane had me light a cigarette for her. The election-day results were coming over on TV now, but I’d paid little attention to them. Jane said there had been some upsets.

(By 9:15 I began wondering if we’d have a session. Jane had finished her cigarette but hadn’t taken off her glasses yet. I fed the cats and put them in the cellar. [Billy had caught a mouse in my writing room this afternoon.] “I’m just waiting,” Jane said, half-dozing. I thought she was probably tired from this afternoon’s upset, and also encountering resistance to the session. As I’ve mentioned recently before, the fear itself could have by now—must have—acquired a life of its own, after all of those years, and it would as an entity resist being dispensed with, or transformed. If only Jane could understand that she had nothing to fear by way of abandonment from me, I thought. I repeat that statement here, again.