“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The impetus behind the compulsive activity was fear, and the fear was directed against the mother. The compulsive behavior was also intermixed with religious connotations, the crucifix and rosary being part of the objects used at times. The desire to move furniture at times represents an attempt to break highly ritualized behavior on his part, and is constructive. When it becomes frantic of course it is a sign that the technique is not working.

Now. In Ruburt’s past compulsive behavior was established at a rather early age, the ritualized activity serving as a substitute security framework.

The compulsive behavior gave him a safe circle in which to operate, but it was a small circle. It was meant to keep harmful influences out, but it was also meant to keep harmful influences in.

The spontaneous self when it did escape, you see, managed to do so only under circumstances where the explosive impulses shattered their way through. In the years between there was some considerable improvement in balance. When the situations developed which we have discussed, setting off the old conflicts, again you see, then the discipline idea was short-circuited back to the old compulsive behavior, though in different form, and with the old religious connotation of self-denial. The old fear of spontaneity returned, and the methodical attempt to deny subconscious impulses; the old feeling of unworthiness was also activated, and the body duly denied. Now this self-denial began in the Catholic home, and he was peculiarly prone to accept it. It was part of the old Catholic training, and he fell for it under a new guise. (Jane spent over a year in such a home while her mother was hospitalized for arthritis.)

[...] In the physical world, such behavior often leads to compulsive action — stereotyped mental and physical motion and other situations with a strong repressive coloration. [...]

(Long pause.) These attitudes may be reflected in rather simple compulsive actions: the woman who cleans the house endlessly, whether it needs it or not; the man who will follow certain precise, defined routes of activity — driving down certain streets only to work; washing his hands much more frequently than other people; the person who constantly buttons and unbuttons a sweater or vest. [...]

Science itself often displays compulsive and ritualistic behavior, to the point of programming its own paths of reasoning, so that they cover safe ground, and steadfastly ignore the great inner forces of spontaneity that make science — or any discipline — possible. [...]

[...] It is easy to recognize the fact that such repeated behavior is compulsive. But when a man’s ulcers bother him every time he eats certain foods, it is more difficult to perceive the fact that this behavior is also compulsive and repetitive.

Dictation: There is a definite correlation between what is called conditioning, and compulsive action.

[...] Behind them there is often the same kind of compulsion. [...]

For a compulsion is here that becomes an attribute, and this compulsion gives its opposite face a human character. For the one main and ultimate attribute or characteristic of this infinite energy is the compulsion to be. [...]

[...] But built-in of course into this necessity for experience, is the compulsion toward value fulfillment, and as you know this does not apply alone to growth, which is in itself a camouflage materialization of value fulfillment along one line only.

[...] An absurd compulsion, I might add. [...]

He is behaving in a compulsive manner. [...]

[...] Then the superiors who will have already suspected the man’s compulsive behavior, will see the true situation. [...]

Because the father freezes emotion in the ritual of fussy compulsion he is actually less dangerous in some ways and more dangerous in others, since the compulsive framework always threatens to explode. [...]

[...] These seeming characteristics in the father’s case however are actually frozen emotionalism encased in compulsions.

[...] They portray the same compulsive-type behavior that can be seen in many instances in your ordinary experience.

You are hypnotized, and you hypnotize yourselves daily, to believe there is only one reality, the physical one that you know and so I would call it, you see, a state of being—hypnotization, where you are freed from a compulsive demanding focus upon physical reality, and where your consciousness is allowed some freedom to pursue its own nature. Where you are to some extent if only momentarily, released from the compulsion to experience your own reality in terms of time and matter and physical form. [...]

[...] Life becomes a series of habits, and in the mentally ill, for example, you may have seemingly meaningless habits, compulsively performed. [...]

This should not be allowed to become a compulsive thing, you see. [...]

[...] She agreed that her own behavior was compulsive, in her fastening upon religion, say, and later on me. [...]

[...] The various unfortunate effects that seem to be caused by smoking are not caused by the cigarettes so much, as by those psychic habits which cause a personality to seek security within such habitual patterns that become compulsive.

[...] They lean toward compulsive behavior patterns. [...]

[...] I also thought portions of the manuscript itself were intriguing, quite acute, mixed up with Fred’s obsessions and compulsions, his personal life and family, his far-out ideas, his attempts and frustrations as he tried to use the manuscript as a vehicle toward understanding himself as he attempted to uncover the secrets of his personality: He thought them locked away from his understanding by the very device he had chosen of speaking for Seth. [...]

[...] The belief in the struggle for survival so super-pervades that anything but the most competitive, determined, super-valiant, compulsive desire to hold onto life appears to be cowardly, a cop-out, at best an unexplainable, erratic, unnatural response to life’s conditions. [...]

[...] (Pause.) Ruburt is now far more willing to make certain changes in his life than he was earlier, and he sees himself more as one of a living congregation of creatures—less isolated than before, stripped down from the superperfect model, and therefore no more under the compulsion to live up to such a psychological bondage (all with some emphasis). [...]

Ruburt’s grandfather gambled compulsively in an attempt to hide his sexual wants, and deny them. [...]

[...] When it was slain it gained freedom, for the negative elements were released from their compulsions, and the ritualized behavior that was symbolized by the formal clothing of your dream.

You are indeed correct, of course, and you are also dealing with the behavior of cults in both circumstances, each concerned with a closed system of belief, rigid attitudes, intense emotionally-charged states, and also with what amounts to compulsive behavior.