“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Some of this throws light on current experience. The religious background was there. At his preference and demand, he changed from a public to a Catholic school after the third grade.⁴ This was against his mother’s judgment. She felt that public schools were better and more socially beneficial. Ruburt, at that age — when he changed at the third grade — had quite a will then, in that he forced his mother to acquiesce to the change of schools. He put up such a fuss, Ruburt, and held such temper tantrums, that permission was given. He was stubborn even then.

(10:19.) Without this experience of following such a belief in the church so fervently, however, he would not understand the need of people for such beliefs, or be able to reach them as well as he does. His questioning mind was exercised originally as he began to examine religious beliefs. He was afraid that psychic experience, when he encountered it much later, might lead to a new dogma, and was determined not to use it in such a way.

(Intently:) Ruburt here chose the writing structure, and has stuck to it as unswervingly as he once stuck to the church, yet always seeking a new framework. For a while he idealized you. Your guidance and strength were his framework. When it became apparent that you were also human, and not a framework, he became frightened. When you encouraged the emergence and expression of his mysticism, then you could no longer act, he felt, as a framework to contain it. By then it seemed to threaten the joint structure of your lives. He knew intuitively that you also used artistic creation as a buffer between yourself and mystical expression.

His “conservatism,” meaning his strong recognition of conservative ideas, is used as a springboard. He leaps from where he knows other people are into new areas. He combats the dogma of spiritualism as much as he did the dogma of the church.

Besides normal reasons, he was psychically inclined, at a time when Jane was young and herself close to a past life. [...] He felt strongly but could not explain. In his solitary nature he came close to being a mystic, but he was unable to relate his personality as Joseph Burdo with the social world at large, or even to other members of the family. [...] He felt strongly his connection with the universe as a whole and with nature as he understood it. [...]

[...] He attracts it, and it must therefore go through him, translated into outward experience. He is himself. He cannot turn himself or his abilities off … His activities would be strong in whatever level of activity he focused his energy, exaggerated in terms of others by comparison. He is a great mystic. [...]

[...] He was essentially childlike in one manner, and yet he had little use for most people. Had he lived to see Jane mature, the feeling between them might well have dissipated. He could not relate to another adult, and when in his eyes Jane joined the league of adulthood he would not have been able to retain his strong leaning toward her.

He never forgave his own children for growing up … Yet he related his own body, at least until the very end, very well with nature. He considered that he aged as a tree will age, but perversely he felt that others aged to spite him … From an early age, however, Jane drank in his feeling of completeness with nature, and it had much to do with her later development …