“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

She always began with one of her fantastically funny sarcastic tales about someone she knew. She had an uncanny ability to sense people’s weak points and make fun of them. For all of that, when she was not sick she had a fine vitality, and a keen, native shrewdness. We played a sort of game: I liked her, but I wasn’t going to be besieged by a barrage of negative thoughts and pessimism for an hour, no matter how wittily presented—and she knew it. The worse part was that she really was funny and it was hard as the devil not to laugh at her, even when I knew I shouldn’t. And she knew this, too. So she would try to see how far she could go before I would call her on it and begin a “mini-lecture,” pointing out that her attitude toward other people was largely responsible for her difficulties.

And her difficulties were illnesses—of such variety and vigor that I think it was impossible even for her to recount what had afflicted her in any one year. Some were serious, and she had several operations. She picked up every infection in vogue, and many that weren’t. She went from doctor to doctor and always with quite definite and often appalling physical symptions. Her diet was greatly restricted, and her illnesses began to become more and more severe.