“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

10. I gave up my commitment to commercial art in 1953, when I was 34 years old. My intuitive desire to do so had been growing slowly for several years. The act of separation finally became conscious and deliberate when I moved to a small community near Saratoga Springs, N.Y. (where Jane lived), to temporarily help an artist-writer friend produce a syndicated “comic” strip. This was the last commercial work I was to do for some time; I finally understood that I was simply more interested in painting pictures than in doing anything else. Since I believe that each of us creates our own reality in the most precise terms, it can hardly be a coincidence that at this time of decision my friend introduced Jane and me — for she was just as devoted to writing as I was to painting.

Ruburt’s mother knew that the child could be taken away were it proven that she was an unfit mother in any way, or unable to give the child proper care. Well over a year before this picture was taken, in fact, Ruburt was sent to a Catholic home.⁵ There, unconventional thought was not tolerated. The inflexibility of dogma conscientiously applied to daily action was experienced, and within it Ruburt tried to apply himself and to focus his deeply mystical nature.*

(11:05.) He had you to consider. This experience of his was taking time from your art as well as his own, to his way of thinking. At the same time, the mystical nature rejoiced at its opportunity, and sensed its potential. Ruburt was determined to go ahead (louder) — he was also determined to keep the old structures and to ignore the cracks in them. In part his loyalty to you was connected, and his responsibility as he saw it to keep you focused as an artist, and to let nothing distract you. Yet here he was distracting you.

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.

Besides normal reasons, he was psychically inclined, at a time when Jane was young and herself close to a past life. [...] 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. There was a block, regrettably. [...]

Her grandfather responded to his own attraction for her, and was able to expand in her direction because she was not an adult. He was essentially childlike in one manner, and yet he had little use for most people. [...]

“I was going back to bed when my last lines suddenly reminded me that I still feel the way I did when I was a young girl; that some part of the dawn does come for me; personally; and that to some extent time didn’t exist before I was born. [...]

[...] I wrote the first tentative notes for it shortly after the 679th session was held, in February, 1974, with the idea of adding to them later if necessary. As events worked out, Seth was halfway through Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality before I realized that these supplementary notes would work well as the first appendix in the first volume. [...]