“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Actually, I came to realize, Jane was so terrified by the thought of those operations that mentally she shunted aside all such prospects. Only when she was home did she begin to fathom the possible depths of the physical reality she’d created for herself, with my help. To coin a phrase, she was “truly, deeply shocked.” The doctors wanted to literally cut the major joints out of her body! To replace them with metal and plastic joints inserted into the bone ends and cemented in place. Jane cried. Her voice shook. “But in spite of everything, over all those years I never felt sick until I went into the hospital,” she wailed. The glowing reports we heard and read about successful joint-replacement operations meant little to her. “Sure, for one joint, or two, maybe,” I said, then shut up, not wanting to add my own fears to her fears. But four of those operations? And why stop there? If they fixed her knees and hips, what about her shoulders? She couldn’t raise her arms level with them. “Oh, they’d operate on the shoulders, too,” a doctor told me in front of Jane, without inflection, as though we were discussing an inanimate mechanism that needed rebuilding. Six operations, then. But what about my wife’s elbows, and her fingers? Somebody at the hospital —I forget who—told us that joint replacements for the fingers and/or knuckles usually weren’t all that successful: The bones in the hands were pretty small and delicate. But it could well be argued that Jane needed to be able to write with a pen or pencil, to express her basic creativity in that particular elementary fashion, even more than she needed to walk. (It would be great if she could at least use a typewriter!) So there could be eight operations, or ten, or …?

Being a proper candidate meant that I would turn my life over to medical science in the hospital for at least a year: a year spent in therapy, surgical procedures, and more therapy, until I ended up having at least four separate operations. My knee joints and hip joints could thus be replaced.

Short of outright failure, however, some of the articles I’ve collected contain the information that a conventional artificial joint replacement—for a knee, say—usually lasts only from four to seven years before loosening. A most discouraging prospect! What does one do when the insert begins to wobble? None of the doctors we’d talked to had mentioned such a possibility. (One can always claim that being able to walk for even four years is a lot better than not walking at all!) Jane and I also read that through experiments with animals medical designers are working to perfect an artificial knee joint with porous surfaces, to promote better bonding of bone to metal; it could last 15 years or more. Someday, I told Jane, and regardless of whether or not we ever choose to take advantage of any of them, we’ll be questioning orthopedic surgeons very closely about what “surgical procedures” are available.

Several of the brightest young rheumatologists and orthopedic surgeons had my future all mapped out for me, or so it appeared, as they discussed my case. When they spoke to Rob and me I tried to listen, but my hearing was still so poor that it was nearly impossible to make out one full sentence at a time. All the doctors seemed to agree that I had a kind of burned-out case of rheumatoid arthritis, with little active inflammation. But one doctor soberly told me that I’d never walk again, or even put my weight upon my feet again, unless I underwent a series of joint-replacement operations—if, he cautioned, I proved to be a “proper candidate.”

[...] Now you also have shared that belief strongly enough in any case so that your joint beliefs merged. His symptoms represent for him the one point of vacuum, comparatively speaking, where the acceleration that has otherwise occurred has not as yet clearly penetrated; and jointly they represent the area in which your combined beliefs have not caught up to your knowledge.

In that area you have individually and, jointly, and on Ruburt’s part more than yours, allowed yourselves to become hypnotized by “effects.” Nor have you really, with feeling, except for certain times, allowed yourselves to clearly work jointly and together to clear those effects—with faith in your abilities to do so.

You form your private and joint realities. [...]

[...] The reason the pendulum suggestions do work is that you are both jointly changing a status quo that you have jointly—though you may protest—previously accepted.

Now, when you make a new contract, so to speak, together, and Ruburt began to show physical improvements—aided strongly, my dear friend, by your loving encouragement—he found suddenly that the joint pendulum sessions ceased momentarily. [...] Your society and its beliefs and your joint acceptance, still, of some of those beliefs, is responsible.

[...] You make your own private reality, and in a marriage relationship you form a joint reality.

[...] In any joint reality, purposes mix and merge. [...]

[...] The release of muscles takes place in such a way that the tendons around joints are gradually loosened, and then the body works on the joints themselves. [...] There is also the repair of tissue about the joints.

There is some swelling, very slight sometimes, when the joints are involved and this merely provides a cushioning process as circulation is quickened and pressure is taken away. [...]

[...] He is at this point in a better position than someone with an overweight problem, in that the joints do not have much weight bearing upon them, or fat to smother their mobility.

You both have individual and yet joint purposes in this your last reincarnation. You are meant to contribute individually and jointly. [...] If you fulfill your abilities then your contribution will be far greater, individually and jointly, than you realize.

[...] Joint psychic endeavors should be very successful and help you both develop your abilities further. Joint creative endeavors will be very successful if you ever attempt them. [...]

[...] But there will be a very noticeable additional energy available to you both, individually and jointly.

[...] Joint attempts at projection, with practice, should be very successful. [...]

[...] This is for your benefit also, and your joint benefits. [...]

[...] You can tell when it is taking hold, and your joint belief is necessary. [...]

[...] (I should have asked which book.) The questions that you have jointly because of your experience in this life so far will lead you to answers that will help many as well as yourselves. [...]

(10:24.) Your home is the result of your joint successes, and intuitive successes. There was work involved in the typing of manuscripts, hours spent, but the success itself was the result of your individual and joint intuitive creativity, curiosity, your sense of challenge and more adventure.

Because of your individual and joint intuitive understanding and intellectual discrimination, you were able from an early age to clearly perceive the difficulties of your fellows. [...]

[...] You work in more measured patterns, and this is largely responsible for your individual and joint feelings over “Unknown” Reality.

[...] It is almost impossible for you to understand the evolution of your thoughts and understanding throughout the years, or your impact upon others—I am speaking jointly.

[...] And despite your joint negativism, and your joint distrust of improvements, and your joint insistence upon ignoring any improvements noted by Ruburt as ludicrously insignificant in the face of what was needed—in spite of all of that, the body has kept up its own struggle.

As the heavy ligaments began to move, some important joints began to loosen. [...]

[...] In the body’s reality, for example, today’s improvements are quite momentous—but your joint attitudes in the past put the body’s efforts down.

[...] Your joint attitudes are plain. [...]

[...] The joint endeavor is of course important—and there will be other joint endeavors of various kinds. [...]

Those joints are definitely being loosened, and the unevenness sometimes presented in walking is the result of new balances being set up gradually as the knees are released. Care is being taken that the release is fairly well balanced, but at the same time one joint may be more released than another in a given moment, causing the feelings of unfamiliarity.

[...] The soreness in the joints will now begin to diminish simply because the first activation was bound to present some friction as the joints began to move from a state of relative rigidity. [...]

The squatting exercise was difficult for two reasons—one having to do with beliefs, and the second to do with the soreness about the joints. [...]

(12:20 AM.) A few remarks—they are very simple and to the point: examine your beliefs jointly and individually. [...]

One particular summer you each made joint effort at the kind of encouragement of which I am speaking, and you got definite results. [...]

It is difficult to know where to begin, but we will start with your joint beliefs: (a) that you need solitude a good deal of the day in which to work; (b) your definite belief jointly that this solitude is almost impossible to achieve. [...] You never seem jointly to satisfy yourselves with any method or program or routine that works—in other words, that gives you peace of mind.

[...] Let us examine your joint and individual feelings about the need for solitude in which to work, and your disinclination to “hurt people’s feelings” when they intrude.

That is why I want that other issue, so important to both of you, jointly and consciously tackled. [...]

[...] You have changed individually and jointly far more than you realize.

(10:39.) Now: when you work through such an episode as this weekend’s bout, then you gain an individual but also joint confidence in your ability to do so—a very important point, a very intimate and vital way of dealing with your joint reactions. [...]

Your growing joint understanding came to your aid. [...]

(10:17.) Added to this is the fact that joints now require lubrication. [...] The lubrication allows more spontaneous actions on the part of the joints, ligaments, and muscles. [...]

[...] The body is not a puppet, however, so the tightened ligaments and muscles restrained the joints to some extent—all of them. [...]

Each muscle, ligament, and joint was to some extent affected, drawn too tightly. [...]

The varying pressure in the joints is also involved here, and all of these issues are connected with depth perception. [...]

[...] The pendulum work was important because of the togetherness it entailed, the joint determination it symbolizes, and Ruburt’s decision to uncover any or all fears rather than hiding them.

They have to do with communication, and with your individual and joint ideas of how feelings are to be communicated, and above all about your beliefs as to which feelings are to be communicated.

[...] The eye condition is not separate, and now the more active muscles are arousing greater activity on the part of the ligaments, which will begin to loosen the joints considerably. [...]

After Saturday both of you became frightened again, and your joint beliefs and habits of pessimism to some extent at least meant that you began to doubt the gains that had been made. [...]

(11:15.) There is nothing wrong, even with the muscles or the joints, organically, but a functional disturbance. [...]

[...] These “new sessions” and your joint, newly accepted center and the framework that is evolving from it, is also highly important.

[...] The joints are becoming not only more flexible, but the fluid within the joints, which was “frozen” —

[...] This also means that the circulation has increased, and that both muscles and joints are more mobile and able to act in a more spontaneous manner. [...]

[...] Ruburt has talked of some renewed work, and I heartily suggest that you concentrate strongly at doing joint out-of-body explorations.

[...] I would like this work to begin, and to continue throughout your lives as a joint effort.

[...] You will not need too many experiences before your own confidence will allow you to leave your body without Ruburt’s assistance, but the joint traveling is still important. [...]

[...] This should be done a week before you begin your joint experiments.

[...] The joints have all begun to move better. [...]

[...] There is an overall picture you cannot see, in which you form your lives together, so that at one time you act, for example, as a unit, and on other occasions or times one acts out certain of your joint beliefs, while the other acts out another one.

[...] Ruburt fixed himself, and fixed it so he could not go outside—because, according to your joint overall attitudes, you believed you must isolate yourselves against the world.

[...] Ruburt retreated, but the situation was always in basic terms, artificially formed by your joint beliefs.

[...] Ruburt’s individual and your joint fears, however, prolong his tension, lengthening what should be a transitory period.

[...] The suggestions I gave you about suggestion fell short largely because at the same time you could not jointly find a position of calmness. [...]

[...] He picked up your joint fears like a sponge, and was highly frightened because of his own fear.

[...] “Unknown” is a creative triumph despite your joint ideas of what that book should be.