“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane had had thoughts of death when she came into the hospital a year ago. She was on morphine and had hallucinations, too. Frank Longwell’s father had just died, and she feared she might take the same road. She really did dislike women when she was younger. She’d been afraid of her body, and sex. Took it as a compliment when told she had a mind like a man. Also thought women disliked her — feared that she was after their men, and all kinds of things.

(“Years ago in the 1960’s,” Jane said, “I thought I loved you a lot more than you loved me, and that you could get along very well all by yourself.” I said that was a total misconception on her part, that I’d never had such ideas, nor wanted to do any such thing. It had never entered my head. I knew things bugged me — working, being an artist, or trying to, and so forth — but not anything to do with her. I didn’t even fear fatherhood as much as she feared becoming pregnant. Not that I wanted fatherhood.

(At 4:03 she said she was getting upset by our talk. I asked her to have a session on Seth’s remark about her symptoms being “amazingly stubborn.” She decided to have a cigarette and see if she could go into trance. I’d always thought the sessions themselves were a form of self-hypnosis. We’d talked about self-hypnosis as a way of breaking through today.

(When Jane spoke for Seth her voice was rather quiet, since it was still sort of raspy from yesterday’s laryngitis, or whatever she’d had. She thought the loss of voice volume was due to free-association material. A strong wind — very strong at times — had sprung up this afternoon, and at times I had trouble hearing Jane above its noise. Her eyes were often closed, and she took many long pauses. The day was alternately bright and sunny, and very gloomy and cloudy.)

People who wrote books against the Catholic Church were excommunicated. Ruburt transferred those fears to society at large. There was a conflict between creative work and the church even when only poetry was involved. He should indeed give himself suggestions that the necessary insights will come to him, and that the proper connections be made whether consciously or unconsciously. But the idea is that it is safe to express himself, and that the true purpose of his life is indeed to express those characteristics that compose his personal reality.

(Very long pause.) He should also realize that pleasure is indeed a virtue. By all means express your emotions to each other as they naturally occur. Ruburt was not taught to love himself as a child, and thought of his talents as a way of justifying his existence — an existence of somewhat suspicious nature, he felt, since his mother told him often that he was responsible for her own poor health.

(“Well, you can see how they fit together,” I said. As we talked she began to feel Seth around again. She was reluctant to do more because it was getting late. I told her to forget that.)

(4:45.) In other words, Ruburt was given strong creative abilities that he was determined to express — but at the same time early in his life he was given the idea that it was highly dangerous to express the very uniqueness that was inherent in his creativity. This is a part of the main issue.

(4:50 p.m. Jane had been interrupted once during her second delivery. “That was very good,” I told her. “It contains excellent suggestions in itself.” I’ve already planned to read it to her every day for a while. It can serve well as a basis for self-hypnosis, but I also plan to help my wife here, and we can see what we can accomplish in the afternoons.

(I hardly had time to discuss it with her, but I think the session is a breakthrough one that’s most valuable. It also showed me that even Jane’s poetry was suspect, where I’d been under the impression that the poetry was the one aspect of her creative abilities that was essentially free, or uncontaminated by fears or doubts. For years I’d thought that if Jane had done only poetry, she’d have had minimal troubles, if any.)