“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

He could not handle his mother’s fear. [...] He dared not feel it as deeply as he actually did; therefore fears in himself were also not to be faced. He was ashamed to look to anyone for help. He is afraid to ask for help because he was ashamed that his mother had to ask him, a child, for help, and often he hated her for doing so.

He felt you were ashamed of his background and did not want him to discuss it. [...] (Pause.) When he goes to see your father he feels guilty because he is not seeing his mother, who is also in a home. He feels that your mother is gloating, having gotten rid of the father, and he is afraid of your family home for fear it might trap you both. He did not want any of your belongings or yours in it.

He thought you discouraged deep conversation unless there was some crisis that brought about a confrontation. He could not admit his fears to himself nor share them with you. He completely lacks the ability to discuss normal fears and worries in any kind of neighborhood contact—with girl friends. [...] He used ideas of positive thinking to squash the fears down more securely. Their charge was so strong that he felt you were as frightened of them as he was, and therefore to discuss them would threaten you also.

[...] He feared he was going beyond your reach, and he could have in a very real manner. [...] He feared that on your own you would not make the effort to pull him back, and yet he would not ask you to do so. To show that he still has some reachable foibles, you still aroused a spark of his old enthusiasm earlier this evening when you suggested that his place (our apartment) still did have possibilities if your eyes were opened to them. [...]

He was afraid shortly before our sessions began that you had largely lost your love for him, and he began frantically to initiate methods of insuring it. [...] He felt your physical withdrawal strongly during your illness previously, felt on several occasions physically attracted to other men, and became terrified. Walt did not want him physically, but he did not love Walt. He feared you were turning away from him in those terms. He was frightened that his sexual appetite would attract him to others and betray him, so he closed the door on it as best he could.

To a large extent in even small things therefore, he felt he had no rights per se, no right to ask you for example for anything. Remember early tales he tells about feeling guilty for buying a lipstick. Before tonight’s session he mentioned that the class wine was gone. He meant obviously that it must be replaced, but would never directly ask you to do so, feeling he had no right.

[...] He would never ask you to do anything for him, for he felt he had no right to do so, or to your love. He needed a strong excuse therefore in order to ask you to do anything. One excuse was that he could not do it himself.

The symptoms, beside other issues, have been a crying out to you for a love he feels he does not deserve but needs, a love he feared you could forget. He feared always that you would go your way in your work and life, and emotionally leave him alone. He could not bear that eventuality.

He went to an extreme (intently), cutting out physical distractions because he believed that he had to. He was afraid that he would go to the extreme in the other direction. Now he is ready to open up. [...] For that matter neither has he.

To some extent he still does. But he is beginning to understand, and is willing to enter that arena. He wants to enter it, and there is the important change in belief that has occurred. He is still frightened, and will be worried lest he become too involved in it, but he is willing to handle that on a conscious level now, which is another important change in beliefs.

When he gets up ahead of you he feels gleeful. He has put one over on you for a change, where usually he sees you as coming out ahead in that regard. He is also relieved that you do not see him immediately, and this alone lessons the stress, for he is afraid that his condition bleakens your morning.

He did not believe he could consciously discipline himself as he thought you did. When this became entwined with your way of life and financial conditions, he dug in deeper. At the same time he did not want you to spend anymore time away from your own work. He cut out more and more stimuli toward distraction.

[...] He began slowly to open up the channels he had closed and he took first steps toward regaining health. He could have become seriously ill several months ago, but he avoided this. He has been on a road to recovery since, though an uneven one. When he returns to work, this is the first sign.

Because of the temporary mother identification, he was open to the suggestion he had concerning his publisher, as the father of his book, you see. He also, because of this identification, feared he would become crippled and that you would leave him. Hence he was supersensitive when he thought you had lost interest in his writing and when he interpreted some of your actions as general neglect or lack of real affection.

He felt that the dream book had let him down when it was rejected. [...] He recalls a photo of his mother in the backyard when he was about seven. [...] Because of other conflicts he remembered this, this Summer when he sat in the yard. His mother visited chiropractors, osteopaths, and he knows it. [...]

At the same time, of course, conflicting is the desire to be known as a successful writer in his hometown, but to do so he must be known again, you see. He is afraid, literally, walking the streets of Saratoga, sneaking in and out when he visits. But here he feels is the best part of himself, unprotected, and the self he tried really to hide, now displayed.

The last session for him—that is, the last key session I gave—is also connected here, for in following it he lifted himself enough above negative attitudes so that he could attract such a meeting. The psycho-cybernetics that he also began because I told him to do what he had done last summer also helped. So he opened himself up to influences that he needed.

He did therefore develop a strong conscientious self, so that these abilities would be put to good purposes, and not frittered away. Until he was absolutely certain that he was on the right track, he would hold back, as indeed he has—but only to a certain degree, as indeed he has.

He determined then to keep this power to sway people in line, until, if ever, he was sure of his cause. He led armies, then, and to what end, he thought. It was in that life also that he knew Sue as the personality that sometimes has emerged between them.

Ruburt realized that he had held back psychically. [...] At one point he tried to insist upon the dominance of the conscious mind, and became pedantic. Seeing that his own ability is greater than our Seagull’s—in certain, now, important areas—he realizes what can be done when he does go ahead.

[...] He must then behave, he thought, in a measured, reasoned, quiet, calm and disciplined way: and to see that he did, he slowed down the motions the body could make. Now, this is the heart of the matter, and he would not let me give it earlier. He should, and indeed, must, be himself. Those qualities of his of which he became suspicious are those that made our sessions and his development possible.

He did feel that you had withdrawn from him as far as his writing was concerned, and he has a need for warm daily affection, which he felt you had also withdrawn, for varying periods, and that you did not care that he was feeling poorly. Of course he would not consciously admit these feelings, considering such sentiments were unbecoming on his part. [...] He felt closed off, yet did not consciously think his feelings justified. [...]

When he was in kindergarten his mother was just becoming ill. [...] He can understand now however that this connection can be broken. He is himself and no one else. He is not his mother. [...]

Of course some restraint is necessary, but he has been leaning toward too much restraint in this respect, trying to be what he is not. [...] He has attempted to tamper with it. Part of this is caused by a misconception, and it is because of this misconception that he found it difficult to see himself as a so-called psychic.

I suggest, quite seriously, that Ruburt make up a list of his accomplishments; that he make a list of his good points; that he write down a short list of those things he thinks he is doing right (humorously), and the things he enjoys; and you add to these lists. [...] In a determination to do better, he has begun to concentrate upon failings. [...]

[...] Tell him he does not have to be spiritually, psychically, or creatively perfect in order to have good health, in the particular way I gave that statement; remind him, for he is equating perfect health with inner perfection, and no human being attains inner perfection. He is holding off (emphatic) on good health until he feels he deserves it. Now this is a point that has not come up before, and he does not realize this consciously.

In other words, he felt that unless he was using his abilities fully, and was spiritually, creatively and psychically perfect, he should mar his physical performance. His idea of honesty and his literal interpretation led him to the idea after the worst part of his difficulties were over, that he should keep some of the symptoms to show he was not a hypocrite to others.

[...] He feels guilty that you do. He feels how you would enjoy and appreciate painting in the same way that my book is being presented, so spontaneously and quickly, comparatively speaking. He thinks this should be granted to you rather than to him, to make up for your job, and so he has felt somewhat guilty about it, and punished himself by holding off. He was afraid you would be jealous of the book, and hurt, and his panic was of your reaction.

This is the meaning of the dreams he had in the past about divorce. He feels completely uncherished, and therefore he does not nourish his body, because he does not want more of it. Now in that way, and he could not explain it to you because he did not understand it, he did feel completely divorced by you, particularly when he was at nursery school. He felt you had divorced his body, but not you see his mind.

[...] In the past, though he knew that he exaggerated, when his legs were bothering him he automatically looked for the nearest available parking place when you were driving. He would never ask you to park close to your destination. He felt it a sign of weakness on his part to even think of it, yet he also felt that on occasion you showed an annoying lack of sympathy or understanding, and at his worst moments he would feel that you purposely chose a place further away—that it was for his own good, you thought, that he face the humiliation in realizing in what poor condition he was. [...]

He has been much more comfortable when he is alone in the mornings and you are at work, because he feels you do not see him at his worst. This is one of the main reasons why he seems to have such great difficulty in getting up in the mornings during the week; where at least he felt he could arise with some dignity alone, and if he was a mess you would not be there to reprove him.

So when you said “You do not try to help yourself,” he was so angry he was nearly speechless. He felt you a stern taskmaster, and the logic as being: the worse you feel the more you should drive yourself. But he felt this also, you see. It was much more important to take a walk when he did not feel good than when he did.

As things turned out, the psychic phenomena was a way to achieve success, and because he loves you he will be sure it is not at your expense. No one will say that he is the most dominant, or accuse him of this if he so obviously needs your assistance, walks behind you. This also means that you show your devotion more obviously, gallantly offering him assistance, thus always showing the world that what he is doing has your blessing.

He felt that you were his accuser, and punished him by becoming ill. Before that he felt that your negative feelings were largely directed against your parents. At this point he felt they were directed against him. He had put a great weight of trust and loyalty in you, and felt lost, insecure and frightened. At that point he felt completely alone. [...]

[...] He slowed down further in anger at the compensation, or what he felt to be its necessity. It also represented a slowdown in the activity from Prentice, in that he feels that if Tam were really interested in his book he would keep better track of it.

He is very worried that you will not find success, recognition that is, or money of a large nature, and does not feel that he should if you do not. In a chaotic world of twisted reasoning he thinks his symptoms will take your mind off your own problems, and relieve you to some extent. He is hurt when people do not buy your paintings off the walls, and angry at anyone who mentions liking a painting without offering to buy it.

He did not want to be put in the position in which he felt he had to put his self-respect on the line. He did not like the public aspects that he felt confronted him. There was no ready fellowship in the psychic field, in which he felt he could take part. At the same time he felt that he should indeed go abroad—out into the public arena, and that he was cowardly for not doing so.

To some extent, he tried to emulate their behavior—that is, to behave the way they did, while at the same time he intently pursued a rather adventuresome inner psychic existence. That existence was expressed in the personality, but not in the normal conversation with the boys he dated, or with his friends. [...] When he left it, however, he was without such a structure, and when he did discuss such matters with the priests, they often had more pragmatic sexual interests in mind.

The strong private nature leads to personal discoveries, and his basically direct way of dealing with the world means that he wants to share those discoveries. He often feels that he needs protection against that same world, for while he shares so much with his fellows. He still feels basically apart from them in important ways.

If he were free of fear, it seemed to him, he would do so. Ruburt, however, deals well with individuals, as in class; while preserving his privacy he still extended it. He enjoyed radio, even on your tours, because he spoke from a concealed viewpoint, where his person was concealed. [...]

He is always afraid because he feels lost in disorganization. He feels guilty for his daughter’s difficulty. He sold the house on the one hand to make money, and on the other hand he sold it to do penance because in his own way he loved it. He talked of selling the land and tearing down the terrace as a projected act of self-mutilation, mutilating something that he loved, to do penance for his sins, in his light.

He felt driven to do so. He is filled with a great love that he can never fully express, and is gifted with an intuition that he cannot follow but cannot close out. [...] It was not because he did not care for the house, but because he did care that he sold it.

Now tell him he has learned, for in the past he would have allowed this to continue, and he did not. [...] He must not build them up by comparing them with the state of health that he desires. [...]

He drags his feet because he does not want to go, because he is afraid that he will be in the poor condition that his imagination has gotten him into. The more urgently you want to make the trip, you see, the better he wants to feel, to make it with you. [...]

At the same time he began to doubt his writing abilities. Perhaps he had overjudged his talents. Following The Seth Material, requests came that showed quite clearly he was regarded as a psychic. [...] He has a strong sense of responsibility and loyalty. He avoided being a “psychic personality” (in quotes) in grand terms. I am digressing here to bring you another issue: the strong responsibility he always felt toward his writing ability, he naturally felt toward the psychic ability—but without the necessary sense of discrimination, since he didn’t realize what such activities involved.

For some time Ruburt felt he was a failure, as a wife and as a writer. He did not see you succeeding, either. Conditions mentioned far earlier made communication difficult, and he brooded. [...] If however he could not achieve the kind of success he wanted, then he might as well have the trappings.

As a writer for example, alone, he does not feel a responsibility (underlined) to write every kind of book possible: gothics, mysteries, science fiction, poetry, essays, straight novels. There is no reason why he should, though he has the ability to write any of them well. So he need not feel that he has a responsibility to be a psychic healer, a clairvoyant, a medium, a psychic psychologist, and so forth, though he has the ability to be any of these.

[...] At the same time he hoped Tam would take Rich Bed, knowing he wouldn’t. Unconsciously Tam sensed that dilemma, as he senses this one. [...] In the meantime your being home also meant that he was face to face with you. You could see his condition, and as given earlier he tried to hide from you at times most of all.

The suggestions he has written down should be read twice at a time, three times daily, morning, noon and before retiring. [...] For a while when he feels tired, or when he feels a definite resistance against work, he should do something that he enjoys doing. [...] He will be refreshing himself, and the same amount of good work will be produced in any case, possibly more.

He did arouse himself for battle yesterday (at my parents’, especially noticing the poor condition of my father), and this was effective, but this state of battle should not be maintained as a daily thing. He understands your need and right to security from all this. [...] If these are withdrawn he has a tendency to panic, although now he deals with this in a much more effective manner than he did.

Running away gave him a feeling of security, but he ran in desperation. He stopped running to deal with the problem, to meet it head on. Symbolically then, he stopped running, but he carried this out in physical terms also.

He has made advances in understanding since our last sessions. [...] The overly conscientious self was angry (today and tonight), and he projected this anger at you, so that he thought he was simply a bother to you, and of no benefit. [...]

[...] By now he’d taken two hardcover books from a bag, and given them to me. [...] In one he’d written a note on a blank page to Jane, and to me in the other. Check their phrasing for a close approximation of the way he talked. Fred also handed me a thick, neatly tied package of brown paper and yellow string—The Christ Book, he said, which was for Jane and me, and for Prentice-Hall. I didn’t open it, and still haven’t. When I asked him where he was really from, he said Denver, and that his address was inside the package. [...] Nor was I quick-witted enough to ask if he had a family, if anyone knew where he was, or what he did for a living—if he worked, or could—or how he found our house in the first place. I wondered if he was schizophrenic. He appeared to be harmless enough. [...]

[...] He was a youngish man with a mustache. He came inside the porch and I began to explain the situation to him as briefly as I could. “How did you get here?” he asked Fred. [...] “This is difficult to explain briefly, but he came here from Denver, he said, and he has no money, and nowhere to go when he leaves here. He’s given us those books and manuscripts” —I pointed to them, stacked up on the picnic table—“and he wants my wife to read them. [...]

How could he manage to arrive here without a penny in his pocket? I kept wondering if he had some money and change (at least) stowed in one of the suitcases, but he swore—Seth swore for him—that he did not, and finally I believed him. I also believed him when he finally sat down in the driveway and said he was prepared to die in the cold. He could have wanted to sit down from sheer physical exhaustion, yet I think more was involved. [...] “Maybe he’s from town,” Jane said. “Maybe the police will just let him go and he’ll come back.” [...]

“Oh, I mean you no harm,” he said. “Fred doesn’t. But he’s awfully cold....” When I asked him again what he would do if he didn’t get into our place, he said, “Why, I think Fred will die. [...] He’ll just die. I am Seth; I know he’ll be all right.” And with that Fred sat down in the wood chips beside the stump that Frank Longwell had placed for us when he’d built the back porch for us. [...]

[...] He’d washed his face and looked fresher. He told me that within the last five hours something had happened that he’d feared all his life: he’d lost the last of his energy. [...] Yet he’d walked the two miles and more to our house from the YMCA, I thought ironically. [...] He accepted docilely, and gave me his address in San Francisco. He left, and Jane still had the impulse to have me call him back in another effort to help him. [...] Stuart didn’t know when he’d leave town, so I said he should return to his friends in California. He said he probably would.

Ruburt is correct: he could be a hero of a short story, and so he appears to himself. It is his way of gaining stature in a world he believes is meaningless. He is afraid that he has few abilities of any kind, so he must of course take steps to see that they are never put to the test in the physical world—hence, some disaster or another always prevents the great creativity that he says he has to offer.

He must protect himself from threats from without. The threats convince him, again, that he must be important and valuable. Beneath this is the feeling that his life is of no value, that he is in fact worthless, weaker than his peers, and he detests himself enough so that he might take his own life. [...] He was taught not to express himself, so he only uses those abilities to protect his life, which justifies them. [...]

When the entire affair really frightens him, he will look for another solution, and it is too bad your institutions of therapy do not help. Guided imagery could help him, for example, but he would need supervision. Ruburt was quite right in the method he used in speaking to him, and my presence would not have served. He would only have used it, as Ruburt said he would. The creative challenge is there for him, and it is one he chose himself.

[...] He learned to turn them off. [...] It is important that when he recognizes such patterns now, as he is beginning to, that he communicate them to you (as Jane did after supper tonight), until he gets used to handling them alone. He trusts your common sense, and such a measure will insure that the habitual mood reactions are cut short.

[...] When he begins to rouse, he comes of course into direct confrontation with impulses before hidden. He knows he wants to move furniture, to change the environment. [...]

[...] For example, while he was convinced—and he was—that he looked more than his age, and was unattractive, then the time element made him push even harder for success. He saw himself older, and in the light of that his success was not enough.

He knew he had access to an amazing amount of energy, but pretended that he did not so that all the energy available would go into the effort to use his abilities properly. [...]

[...] He was to enlighten you, and so he did. He was of an ancient entity, and you have known him in other lives. He wanted his mother to look inward. He was at one time, he was at one time his father’s uncle.

He did not mean to stay within physical reality. He only came to show you what was possible, and to bring the both of you to an understanding of inner reality. He chose his illness, it was not thrust upon him. He did not want to be of the earth. He was done with it, and he only returned so that both of you could learn the truths and inner realities that you are now seeking.

The child knew well what he was doing, and subconsciously you also knew. He is not an infant to be pitied, nor a child taken from you before his promise was achieved. He was a personality who left you when his own reincarnations were finished. [...] See also page 141.) He returned to help you and show you the way. He is at present resting. He will not return, but go to another reality where his abilities can be used to more advantage.

...He wanted to give you an impetus, and his effect was far stronger when he died than had he lived, and he knew this... For his abilities could not have been used fully in this existence and he would have met frustration.

Ruburt feels that he has a dragon by the tail. He is damned if he will let go and yet he is afraid to pull harder. You can specifically say that this has to do with what you call your psychic work, but even before “it” began he was aware of that energy of his, concerned about using it, focusing it, delighted with it, and afraid of it at the same time.

He has been using the symptoms indeed as brakes. [...] He is afraid to go ahead, feeling it not safe, yet he is damned if he will retreat, and for that matter he realizes that there is no retreat from your own knowledge and experience.

He is literally a great receiver of energy. He attracts it and it must therefore then go through him, translated into experience outward. He is himself. He cannot turn himself off, or his abilities off. [...]

He has been afraid to use his abilities freely, and therefore set up physical conditions that remind him constantly of his body and objective physical life, for fear that he will go too far beyond it. He uses the radio often as physical noise to bring him back and serve as a guideline in altered states of consciousness.

He was not walking properly by a long shot, but he wanted to get up, and he walked as well barefooted as with shoes. [...] He began to write notes for his book as soon as breakfast was over, and before the table was cleared. He felt suddenly comparatively free.

From now on he should forget the word “work” in reference to his own writing. [...] Now this morning at the table he suddenly realized why he did not want to get up this morning, and why at other times he did not want to get up: he did not want to go to work, like a child who does to want to go to school. [...]

He tried desperately to schedule his highly creative productivity to fit that pattern. Whenever he had difficulty writing he would become more and more particular about his writing hours. He found that sometimes his so-called writing hours were not as productive as his after-hours writing. He loves to write at twilight, for example.

He was living with you, someone he loved who had a different temperament, and tried to make his align with your own because of his love, and also because he felt your ides were better. You were older, knew more, he felt; and you were also afraid of the spontaneous qualities that he possessed.

[...] (Pause.) When he feels he has stumbled he does not walk right. When he cannot look to the right or the left it is because he is afraid to. (Very rapidly.) When his ankle bothers him it is because he fears he might fly off in the wrong direction. [...] When his periods are late he is “holding out” in quotes until he is certain of his direction.

The psychic influence of the other priests was far more creative than he realizes, and it was always in the realm of ideas that he rebelled against authority. [...] He did not leave the church, literally, until long after he had left it spiritually. [...] Inside that framework he learned what was wrong with it, and from his experiences was born the strong inner, barely conscious, desire to help his fellow beings emerge into some kind of lucidity. [...] All that remains is for him to realize that he is indeed now on the right track. [...]

He felt that the professor was bringing his students to show them he was a fraud. [...] He knew he did not want the people here, and thought he was a coward. [...]

He should also, for personal reasons, stay away from the monastery. [...] This does not mean he is not rising above them, for he is. It does mean that until he is in control of his organism such episodes are not helpful.