“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

One small postscript. Ruburt must see his existence as arising from the natural cycle of his mother’s reality and his own—two different things but connected. He did not cause his mother’s illness by his birth. Her attitudes toward Ruburt’s birth belonged to his mother, and those attitudes of his mother were far more important than Ruburt’s birth.

The cat was aware in its terms of this. It became fat like Ruburt’s mother, but no longer threatening. It was fixed. If Ruburt’s mother had been fixed Ruburt would have had a different mother and different background, granting Ruburt had come alive.

Ruburt identified with him being closed up and running scared. He was afraid of the cat, considering him wild and caged originally, as his mother had been in his interpretation, so he felt forced to help the cat (who did not have any love for him), as he felt before he had to help his mother—who would kill him if she had the chance.

Ruburt’s mother hated cats, particularly black ones. He, Rooney, and Ruburt passed symptoms back and forth. He was not a passive receptor however, the cat, and he even learned from his encounters with Jack Wall. Many of Ruburt’s feelings about his mother however are buried in Rooney’s grave. (Very important.) Rooney however is free of a distrust that he had carried with him, having to do with his background in that house, this time, across the way, and was grateful for those additional years you gave him.

The clothing sent by his mother has been somewhat dangerous to him because his feelings, given above, automatically extracted from them the negative feelings of his mother toward him, while blocking out the constructive and loving ones.

[...] He recalls a photo of his mother in the backyard when he was about seven. [...] His mother visited chiropractors, osteopaths, and he knows it. [...]

It just happens, you see, that when Ruburt’s mother was coming down with arthritis, Ruburt was in the early grades—a kindergarten room with blocks and small stools and cloak room. This simply brings up associations, of course, with the nursery school, serving as another connection with his mother’s symptoms.

[...] The moderate drinking helped reunite the conscious and subconscious as a total self, knocking out the unwholesome identification with the mother. The swearing bears a direct relationship to the mother’s language.

(Seth told Bill he subconsciously blamed his father for his mother’s condition, after Bill remarked that whenever he and his father were together for a few minutes they would end up arguing. Also, when a small child Bill had overheard a sexual encounter between his parents, in which his mother cried out. Bill took it to mean his father had hurt his mother. Later when his mother fell ill, Bill made the subconscious connection with her illness and this earlier incident, and blamed his father for his mother’s illness.

(Bill’s mother, who was also an arthritic cripple like Jane’s mother, was a very aggressive personality, a masculine one, who developed arthritis in order to lose her mobility and thus avoid harming Bill’s father and the children. [...] Seth said association worked here, in that Jane could perceive this data because her own mother has arthritis. Bill’s mother was very fond of flowers.

(Bill’s mother was fascinated by the relationships of numbers, Seth said, and the color blue. After the session Bill revealed that his mother had been a bookkeeper, which Jane and I did not know previously. Peggy recalled that Bill’s mother had been buried in a blue dress, which upset Bill’s father very much; and that Bill’s mother had many blue dresses in her wardrobe.

[...] Just before this he had mentioned again the similarity between Jane’s mother and Bill’s mother. [...] Jane had been attracted to him also in an attempt to make up to him, because she hadn’t been able to make up to her invalid mother. [...]

The father, your father, represents to him, Ruburt, the helpless portions of his own mother, directed so to speak where he can see them. Your mother represents to him the destructive, unreasoning energies of his own mother, and in the pull and conflict between your mother and father, he sees the tortured connections of his mother’s soul.

[...] In his subconscious your father and mother become two aspects both representing his own mother. [...]

Now, if you will forgive me, he sees your mother’s stupidity in important matters. [...] It is not aimed, it is a rage, enveloping like a storm of nature, enveloping even the personality from whom it emits, so that the mother becomes a victim also.

[...] Your mother is not out to kill him personally. His mother was not out to kill him personally. [...]

[...] Driving through Sayre,¹ Pennsylvania, one Sunday afternoon, Joseph noticed a house for sale in a neighborhood he knew — and remembered that it had belonged, in his memory, to a man of whom his mother had been fond. [...] Joseph only remembered his mother speaking of this gentleman in the past. In the recognized reality shared by the Butts family there had been no intimate contact between Joseph’s mother and Mr. Markle (as I’ll call him). Joseph’s mother had been greatly struck by the man, however, and was convinced that she could have married him instead of the husband she had chosen. [...]

[...] When the Johnsons told us who the owners were, I could only reply that I’d heard the name while living in Sayre; the old couple would be contemporary with my mother. Although I couldn’t remember my mother mentioning them, it was at least possible that she’d known them. [...] To some small extent, then, Jane and I could toy with inferences drawn from Seth’s comment that that particular house had represented my mother’s second choice. [...]

[...] A coincidence — a mere trick of fate that Joseph could be walking through the old man’s home,² and that Mr. Markle would be spending his last time in a nursing home, as had Joseph’s mother — meaningless but evocative that this house was for sale, and that the old man was insisting upon a price higher than the house is worth, just as Joseph’s mother insisted upon a high price for her own home, and determined to get it.³ Period. [...]

The intent [that] Joseph’s mother had lives beyond the grave, in those terms. [...] These qualities attracted Joseph’s mother, Stella, and with the situation as she set it up in that life she was impressed, knowing that the man’s talents would bring him wealth. [...]

[...] The mother had an absolute terror of cats, and considered them the personification of evil. She used the cat symbol as the symbol for her own mother-in-law. She was extremely unbalanced, the mother, emotionally, and considered her husband’s mother, who was a foolishly naive, good-natured and innocent thing, as a personification of evil.

In this case the child did not dare slap the parent, for even the slightest move upon the mother’s bed, the slightest most unintentional motion, made the mother cry out in pain. [...] This was aggravated because when the mother became frightened she pleaded with the child to sleep with her.

[...] But, and here Joseph we come to the real heart of the matter, the mother retaliated in the main not by a direct attack upon the child, but by causing the child to believe that its misbehavior could be, and very nearly was, going to result in the death of the mother. As any child does, the child at times wished for the parent’s death, and here we see the mother acting out her own death in order to punish the child.

The child even then realized that violence and aggression was somehow connected with his mother’s illness. [...] He held them back in pure terror of the consequences, for suddenly the violent-tempered mother was immobile. [...]

[...] This is another example growing out of my mother’s connection with the object. [...] Alice Butts is a retired cousin of my mother’s whom my mother admires very much. [...]

[...] The connection between the two being the fact that the object concerned a phone call to us from my mother; and that my mother was also the sender of the card to us.

(Of course the emotional involvement and reaction between us and my parents is strong, and would tend to override more specific details of the envelope object itself, once Jane had picked up the idea of my mother. Jane had the idea of Mother’s greeting card in mind from the start of the envelope data, she said. [...]

[...] My mother made the phone call that resulted in the object; my father is in poor health, and she talked of this when Jane returned the phone call at about noon on Sunday, August 14. In addition, the greeting card was mailed to us by Mother from Tunkhannock, PA, where she visited my brother and his wife. [...]

[...] Today by telephone Nancy verified Seth, in that her mother is seriously ill at Mayo Clinic; the mother has been ill for some time, but was not, for instance, the last time Jane talked to Nancy, sometime prior to the 358th Session. [...]

The suggestions came from the mother. Suggestions given by the mother are always the most tenacious in any case. [...]

[...] His mother let it be known that she had no use for him, and he thought if his mother could not love him, then certainly there must be something seriously wrong and unworthy about him.

In his efforts to understand and help your parents he has more than made up for any failure with his mother. [...] Others more capable have taken over the same role with his mother. [...]

He could not handle his mother’s fear. [...] 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.

To ask you for help therefore was to put himself in the position of his mother, and plead helplessness. This has been mentioned before but it is a good point, that retaliation against his mother was felt to be impossible, for she would then have an attack for which Ruburt felt responsible. [...]

(In an emotional way Jane also expressed some fears about her mother. [...] My mother also entered the conversation, etc. [...]

[...] (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. [...]

(This afternoon I’d suggested that she might like a word from Seth on her mother’s present situation—meaning that if her mother now had more insight as to her treatment of her daughter, this knowledge might help Jane feel better about her own reactions to her mother. [...]

He was made to feel often that he was at least strongly responsible for his mother’s illness. It was also true that on other occasions his mother apologized for such statements—but the statements of course were highly charged and emotional, while the apologies were relatively prosaic. [...]

(Slowly:) Ruburt’s mother chose her own life. [...] (Long pause.) His mother actually found in the nursing homes a certain kind of comradeship. [...]

[...] His mother tried her writing. It would never have occurred to your mother to try short stories. [...]

There has been a certain release given on the part of the mother, who has taken joy from lack of restraint. [...] The vitality of the mother was of great benefit in many ways to the sons.

You are being of strong practical help now, though it may not appear so, by refusing to accept at this point the role that your mother wants you to take. I am not saying of course that you should not be as kind and considerate as possible, but that you not try to take your father’s place at your mother’s demands.

(This afternoon Jane and I took my parents to the hospital in Sayre; mother for an ear examination, father to be admitted to the psychiatric ward. [...]

[...] It is almost like a reflex habit, a mechanical one, that keeps him now connected with your mother. [...]

[...] Ruburt’s mother meant will, drive, power, for she had power over the household and over Ruburt. But that power went nowhere, for Ruburt’s father was physically free while his mother was not. [...]

The Christian-Science background with the father was also important, for it was this inner belief of the father that did sustain him, and that inclination of the father and his mother (Mattie) that Ruburt chose in his background to temper his own mother’s beliefs and lead him in our direction. [...]

[...] Ruburt’s background with his mother and his beliefs in will then merged with your feelings for isolation from your father. [...] You blocked out emotional spontaneity, feeling that your mother’s was detrimental to creative isolation. [...]

Ruburt saw how being away from his desk and the house worked creatively to his advantage, as per the ride to your mother’s (in Centerville), and the earlier walk around the block. [...]

Remind Ruburt further (pause) that he did his best to help your mother, making efforts toward love and communication (long pause) that he felt you were not able to express toward your mother at times.

[...] Also remind him that he did not deal with malice toward his own mother. Do remind him affectionately and often that for many years he loved his mother deeply, and that his own existence made his grandfather experience a love that was a light in his later years.

[...] She did say her panicky feelings had to do with the session about her mother Marie yesterday, and a dream she’d had last night. [...]

[...] I told her it was important that I read her my notes for yesterday’s session, especially those pertaining to her mother. [...]

Since Ruburt’s mother had often spoken most vehemently of Ruburt’s birth being a source of disease, that is her arthritis, and pain, subconsciously Ruburt feared on a basic level that his mother wished to punish him for causing her such pain.

The wry neck enabled Ruburt to identify with his mother, and therefore avoid such punishment. At the same time, the wry neck itself inflicted a punishment in place of the imagined and feared greater punishment which Ruburt felt his mother intended, the imagined punishment being a basic and infantile terror of being pulled back into the womb.

If Ruburt’s mother had it to do over, she would not have had the child; and the child hidden within the adult still feels that the mother actually has the power, even now, to force the child back into the womb, and refuse to deliver it.

[...] Surely he must be aware that his mother’s characteristic pose in bed was one that necessitated a complete turning of the upper body, whenever she wished to look one way or the other; and that her neck, because of her arthritis, could not turn normally.

[...] Old guilts held regularly in normal balance concerning his mother then leapt upward. The adult wondered then, had he misjudged the mother? Was not the mother at last sending him presents? To punish himself he attempted to give himself his mother’s symptoms, to put the shoe on the other foot, so to speak, almost in a religiouslike atonement.

[...] There is some identification with the mother here, based on highly falsified data; if he becomes the mother, then the mother cannot hurt him. [...]

He often projected these onto his mother, so that she became the symbol of all evil, at various times in any case. This regardless of the harmful qualities of her own nature, the mother’s.

He feels, actually, an overly severe sense of responsibility to support himself, and not be as his mother was, a financial burden. [...]

The mother wanted success for the child, and yet Ruburt felt (pause) that success would also be resented by the mother, that the mother would be jealous of it. The mother wanted success for the daughter so that the daughter could share the fruits of the success and provide for her. [...]

[...] His mother encouraged the writing. At the same time he felt guilty that he was free and the mother was not, and he blamed himself to some degree for her situation. The mother did blame the child in this respect.

[...] (Pause.) He did not want to share it with his mother, for to Ruburt this meant having his mother live with him.

[...] This afternoon, incidentally, Jane and I spent in Sayre, visiting my father in the hospital, eating supper with mother, etc.

(One development of possible interest concerning her mother took place last month, in October. Jane received a hand-knitted sweater from her mother as a Christmas present. In her accompanying letter Jane’s mother wrote to the effect that she was sending the sweater ahead of time because she did not “expect to be around” by Christmas. [...]

Last night’s dream was a communication from the Helen who was the friend of Ruburt’s mother. [...] He did not pick it up from his mother. [...]

(A reminder might be added here that Jane obtained the December date for her mother’s death through the pendulum only. [...] Jane has not seen her mother for some years now; the two women do correspond regularly, however.

[...] She has come to think that these experiences, taken together, may forecast her mother’s death. [...]

The idea of disclosure however is more important, for you remember that your mother did not like to have her photograph taken. [...]

The wonder about your mother’s reaction however is important here. [...]

[...] Creatively you see the photographs’ value, but they still caused a conflict between your ideas of perfection and self-disclosure, particularly as they were related to your mother’s attitudes.

[...] Otherwise, regardless of what you say you thought, your mother would take my explanation as given.

[...] I thought the intro had triggered Jane’s material about her mother—for here Jane was, creating—or at least mimicking—her mother’s situation on her own. Jane’s material this morning seemed to show that her buried feelings about her mother were much stronger than she’s suspected, and more damaging. [...]

[...] Of the last few months or so I spent at my mother’s house—when she called me time after time during those spring and summer months of 1950: she wanted her pillows turned, she cried out in rage and pain—and here I was some 30 years later, calling out to Rob (voice breaking) to move my pillows or raise my head. [...]

But I thought, “My God, I should be able to forgive my mother anything, being in that state, with a child beside.” [...]

[...] He got in his car as fast as he could and drove away, leaving mother raging on the bedside. [...]

[...] In one reality, for example, Joseph’s mother married Mr. Markle. [...] In that reality Mr. Markle died before Joseph’s mother did, so there was no need for a Joseph, here, to even look for a house; he had one. [...]

(We discussed the general implications of Seth’s material on my mother — that she was not only “alive” after her “death,” but that a portion of her was focused upon Jane and me. Jane had allowed Seth to talk about the whole situation in a more personal way than she usually does; the result is that we already have more data on Stella Butts than on the earlier deaths of Jane’s own parents [in 1971 and 1972], for instance.⁴ We knew that Seth wouldn’t continue describing my mother and her present reality indefinitely; such a study could easily grow into a book by itself. [...]

[...] It would seem as if all of this was dependent upon earlier events: his mother’s prior meeting with Mr. Markle years ago, when both were young; her daydreams and fantasies in later years; her own death; Mr. Markle’s old age, and his own abandonment of the home.

(“Well, I know you said in the last session [just before 10:33] that from her nonphysical reality my mother isn’t trying to coerce Jane and me into buying Mr. Markle’s house — yet I keep wondering what others will think about the idea of influence being felt in our reality from ‘the other side,’ you might say — ”)