“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I had several questions resulting from Jane’s material of yesterday. A remark that I’d made, to the effect that her illness has probably cost us at least half a dozen books over the years, elicited a response from her; she brought it up today, in fact. Now, she said, she wasn’t doing anything except a little bit each day. She’d picked up the idea of discipline from me, in a most unfortunate way, I thought, considering her most spontaneous nature. We talked about why her psyche had done so. She agreed that she is protected from life in the hospital. She also thought that she personally couldn’t live up to the high quality of the Seth material — her own “mental work,” a good way of putting it. The symptoms, then, served to keep her at her desk over the years because she was afraid that if left alone she’d fly off somewhere and wouldn’t do anything.

(The symptoms — and now the hospital — protected her from criticism, eliminated book tours, the whole bit. Jane got scared with Sumari in the beginning, just as she had at the start of the sessions in 1963, but she was also very curious and turned on. She was also frightened at the tests in sessions, of being wrong, and of the seance. Thought she’d be called a hysterical woman, an exhibitionist, and so on. Being right didn’t carry the weight that being wrong did. Very good. There were tears at various times with today’s material.

(Jane was afraid of others as a young girl, and even in college — that she wouldn’t get their approval — whereas, I said, the others should have been afraid that they wouldn’t get her approval, since her abilities transcended theirs. So why should she sink to the common denominator? Jane said she’d never thought of that. I said it’s too bad the young don’t have the insight to stress their capabilities regardless of the opinions of others — but such thinking comes with age, usually, I’m afraid.

(Even those at the writer’s conference in the summer of 1957, at Milford, Pennsylvania, told her she’d outgrow her urge to write — that she should have a baby. And Jane felt that her body could betray her by getting pregnant. She even thought I felt that way. It’s true that I had no urge for parenthood, but I didn’t think of betrayal, or bargains. Jane was afraid getting pregnant would ruin my career because I’d have to work full time. I could have reacted better than that, I’m sure.

(I think the important thing today was that as we talked we saw how with each category Jane described negative beliefs and reactions — an excellent point. It’s a thought we’ve had before — but it seems that each thing we’ve accomplished has been in the face of, or in spite of, a barrage of negative thoughts, feelings, and beliefs.

(Yet she finally admitted that she knew she’d succeeded with my mother — not with my father, though. As to her own mother, Marie, I said it was perfectly okay to admit that she didn’t succeed there, or chose to withdraw or admit failure. Jane thought her mother hated her as a child, and still did even now. The mother’s hatred, Jane said, led to her need for protection — perfectly normal, I said. Jane said that when he was drunk her father told her that Marie was her enemy. Evidently she believed this.