“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.

(At 4:40, she was near tears when I asked why her psyche hadn’t risen up to protect her when it became obvious that she was heading for deep trouble with the symptoms. She said her psyche did rise up to protect her many times — otherwise she’d have died, of course. She mentioned various periods of improvement — her work on her unfinished and unpublished autobiography, From This Rich Bed; her published novel, The Education of Oversoul Seven, and so on. But each time a new book came out she got worse. Near tears, she said that she didn’t have to get any worse when a new book comes out — what’s left? She agreed with me that she now has the ultimate protection of the hospital.

(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.