“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

He did not start out being a public speaker, for example. He likes the distance between himself and the public that books provide (emphatically). He is excellent at communicating ideas in writing or vocally, gifted in understanding people—so those abilities do come to his aid in public speaking engagements.

The fact that some isolation suits you both made the affair palatable enough in the beginning. The idea of a public life—to some extent, now—has hung over his head, so to speak, almost like a threat. He told himself that if he were using his abilities as he should, he would then naturally seek out their public expression.

(Pause at 10:20.) It goes without saying that this is all black and white thinking. He writes his own books because writing is such a natural part of his expression. It is his art. Ideally it is his play as well, and his books serve as his own characteristic kind of public expression, fulfilling the most private and the most public poles of his psychological activity.

(Long pause at 10:35. This turned into a one-minute pause.) The public arena (pause) is not so frightening. It is more factual to say that it goes against the grain as far as Ruburt is concerned. On top of that, however, you have the unconventional aspects of his own work that involves at least some controversy. (Long pause.) If Ruburt wrote other kinds of books—mysteries, for example, or straight novels—he would of course have no trouble explaining them in the public arena. But he would not find that arena anymore to his overall liking.

The public man, the man of letters, et cetera in other centuries, and the public man say of Rome, or of the Middle Ages, or of the 19th Century, involved personal interactions with the public, but in very limited, controlled situations. [...] The line between the public and the private was much more clearly drawn. [...]

[...] Your father greatly distrusted the public and public events. When his battery shop closed and the public turned to the new inventions, that made his livelihood passe. He disliked the public from that moment on, and felt resentful toward those whose pictures he took, that his livelihood would be at the expense of their favor.

[...] You age of communications has significantly altered public and private life, so that for example by mail Ruburt might receive as many petitions as the king of a country in times past. People of no other age, historically speaking, have had to contend with the dimensions of public exposure that are now possible.

[...] If he is gifted with words in writing, and gifted in speech, then he feels that he should go out bravely into the public arena, and speak out his message to the world.

[...] He enjoyed dealing with it by sending the written word out into the public arena. He insisted upon that—the publication of his work. The books were to be his public platform. [...]

(10:28.) He is proud of that translation of private creative experience into the artistic public act of publication. [...] He did not want to be a public personality of that kind. [...]

[...] The idea of the public image coming through the correspondence, and as it was interpreted by Ruburt, further deepened the feeling of responsibility. [...] He began to think that anything less than this public personality was cowardly. [...]

[...] To enjoy seeing people is a different thing than expecting yourself to be a public personality, however. [...]

(I do think that it will all serve a valuable purpose, however, if we clear up the one major stumbling block over publicity—whether to do or not to do it. [...] Earlier I asked Jane if she was willing to stick by her decision to forgo public life, as stated in the letter she wrote Prentice today, and she said yes. [...] I for one have no real idea of how Prentice-Hall may react, although Jane told me today that she’s picked up that Prentice-Hall plans to be much more aggressive on questions concerning publicity. I don’t think there will be any hassle, for surely the people at Prentice-Hall know enough about Jane’s abilities and sales and productive talents to know a good thing when they have one, whether or not publicity is involved. [...]

(This session came about because of a phone call I took today from the publicity department at Prentice-Hall. [...] A few weeks earlier Jane had tentatively okayed with publicity the idea of doing an occasional radio-phone interview, based on the condition that first she obtain one of those desk microphones/telephones so that she didn’t have to hold the phone for an hour or more. [...]

(What particularly upset me about the flap over publicity was that I saw in it a repetition of past ways of refusing to meet challenges head on involved with the psychic work. I finally understood that Jane didn’t want to do any work involving publicity or interviews, and that for years now she’s bitterly—if unwittingly —resisted such demands, and that these unresolved pressures were having a devastating effect upon her physically. [...]

[...] Generally speaking, however, the kind of person who performs as a public figure is not the kind of person who could produce highly creative material of an original nature. The public format requires a kind of social shorthand that does not allow for the development or expansion of ideas or creativity, so that the attempt to explain anything like “our work” would be extremely difficult in that regard. [...]

At the same time you’ve felt a strong responsibility to perform publicly, to sell books, get your message across, let people see that—yes, the sessions do happen—there is no fraud involved. You were also afraid that spontaneously you would want to do public encounter work, that you’d be tempted, that once begun, you’d be swept along and that the circumstances would be volatile. [...]

In a fashion, you consider the public arena of TV and tours in the same way that Joseph views the world of art galleries, shows, and auctions. [...]

[...] Even then the question arises of public response to trance messages when they contradict official thought—and your questions about how the material might be misused as you explained in God of Jane very well, and—How “responsible” is the conscious mind for trance messages?—How responsible are you for Seth’s messages? [...]

Public interviews involve him, therefore, in far more than the selling of books, you see, connected with the tours of people who are merely writers. [...] If he simply did not want to make any public statements outside of the books themselves, there would be no problems there. [...] If he were poorly equipped to speak in public there would be no problem. [...]

[...] I went back to working on taxes while Jane talked to him, and at the same time found myself wondering whether his unexpected visit might symbolize one of the very facets of Jane’s dilemma about privacy versus the public life—at least as I understand it: Her vulnerability and availability to anyone who chooses to come here. [...]

[...] In this case at least, then, Jane had reacted positively to someone drawn to her by a public aspect of her abilities.

[...] His relationship with me, and mine with him, is bound to be interpreted in multitudinous ways by our readership, the public and so forth. [...]

Ruburt found it very difficult to take a public stand, as separate from, say, a private one. My book and his—that is, Mass Events and God of Jane—both do take public stands. [...]

[...] There were always two faces to his endeavors—the private search for understanding, and the public expression as a writer. [...] The painter’s painting is a result of a private search, but in a gallery it becomes a public expression. [...]

Largely—for I am simplifying here to some considerable degree, but largely—Ruburt felt little difficulties to be encountered in his private search, but in their public expression he was far more cautious. It is impossible, of course, to really separate the two, but as his work became better known, the private search became more of a public issue. [...]

[...] He was nevertheless determined to take some kind of a public stand—for not to do so would mean not to express himself through his books at all. He knew he would never give into that course, but he felt that some of that dates back to childhood habits and beliefs, when his very food and bed was given him by the auspices of the public. [...]

[...] He did not like the public aspects that he felt confronted him. [...] 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.

[...] In a way the symptoms are a statement of the distance Ruburt wanted to maintain from public life, because he felt equally that he should go out into the world in a public manner, and “tackle it.”

[...] The secret elements of his personality rise up against the public connotations of standing before the crowd. [...] It is a distaste for being surrounded by the public emotions.

[...] It can hardly be a coincidence that this “opportunity” materialized shortly after we began our new program suggested by Seth, and what we’ve learned about our attitudes toward publicity, scorn and criticism, and go forth. [...]

(Long pause at 10:20.) The public image is bound to make him feel inferior if he takes it too seriously. [...] It is his public image as a psychic, of course, not as a writer, that here is the issue. [...]

[...] Her reading the NY Times Book Review each week had reminded me recently that her intent perusal of that publication represented a striving toward something she was not about to achieve—conventional recognition in creative writing.

[...] Yet she’d found this deep yearning snatched away with the advent of her psychic abilities—goodbye to all of those accepted reviews, the critical success, even the money, that would go along with the conventional acceptable public image of the successful writer of good quality poetry and/or fiction. [...]

[...] No wonder we sought privacy more and more: any public exposure came to be avoided automatically, as part of the protective coloration.

(I explained that in their different ways both Jane’s ESP classes, and the mail, reflect other aspects of public exposure, and that these too must have engendered resistance over the years. [Jane remarked last week to the effect that she wondered how she could get out of answering the mail, for example.] Class had always seemed to offer much, and has helped many people, yet implicit in its very existence was the fact of public exposure concerning unacceptable psychic abilities, in Jane’s eyes, I told her. [...]

[...] It’s clear now that she would see such efforts as leaving her too open to public attack. [...] In short, then, it seems that any overtures she may choose to make about encountering public reaction to her abilities will —and should be—of her own choosing. [...]

[...] He would have encountered no unusual obstacles as far as his public stance was concerned, in that he would have felt the rather characteristic dilemma of some creative writers, who must assimilate the private and public portions of their experiences. [...]

(I remarked to Jane today that if I’d known what I think I know now, today, a month ago we could have withdrawn Mass Events from Prentice-Hall, using the disclaimer dispute as an excuse, and delayed its publication for as long as we wanted to. [...] Now, it seems that we will have to deal with the public as far as Mass Events goes. [...]

At this writing, Seth is nearly halfway through The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, which will show where and how private beliefs become public events. I’ve finished for publication Emir’s Education in the Proper Use of Magical Powers (the entire first chapter came in a dream), and The Further Education of Oversoul Seven. [...]

[...] Actually, I was quite concerned with the quick passage of time, and the pressure to prepare manuscripts for publication. [...]

Rob typed Seth’s other books, Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul, The Nature of Personal Reality, and the two volumes of The “Unknown” Reality, added his own notes, and did almost all the work of preparing them for publication. [...]

I’d been producing my own books during this time, and getting them ready for publication, so surely Seth wasn’t taking up any creative slack of my own. [...]

The general public, however, has been obviously largely ignorant of the books. [...] Again, they do not fit into the overall occult picture as even the general public understands it. [...]

It will take longer then for the general public than it did, for example, with The Seth Material hardcover, for several reasons.

[...] The general public, moreover, in those terms does not know how to respond. [...]

[...] People do not feel silly buying such a paperback, but many of these people, in the general public now, have to make certain mental adjustments before they will spend more. [...]

As the personal material began to unfold we started calling it the “deleted” material because we kept it separate from the more general “regular” or public sessions. [...] As the years passed after 1963 we acquired two sets of Seth material, then, one public, one private. It wasn’t until after Jane’s death in 1984 that I took the “time” to understand that Jane’s Seth material—her great passionate body of work—really didn’t need to be categorized as public or private—that all of it was simply one multifaceted creative entity.

[...] Jane held only five “regular” or public sessions while delivering this large group, and those five are presented in Volume 8.

[...] With the publication of Volumes 7 and 8 I’d like to hear from readers about benefits they may have derived from experimenting with Seth’s ideas. [...]

“Now,” I mentally said to my departed loved one in all sincerity, “if we had the chance to do it all over again, I’d suggest that we dispense with all divisions—that we regard the Seth material as a great whole, any part of which, public or private or in between, has the creative power to help not only us but many others. [...]

(3:49.) Ruburt began to wonder about television and so forth for publicity. [...] In later years, as books were finished, the matter of publicity would rise anew, but his relative success meant that the issues stayed in the air, so to speak. Your discussion reminded him of how he used to be (pause), and also brought up in his mind the seeming contradictions of creativity, in that it is private, but usually ends up as some kind of public expression. [...]

The service station is significant on many levels, being used here as a particularly American symbol of the mechanical age, and also one that refers to a pursuit that is utilitarian and also provides service (as Jane said this morning): You deal directly with the public. [...]

(3:33.) The harder you try, therefore, to force your artistic nature into the public system of beliefs, to teach it how to service cars, for example (intently), or to apply itself to the mechanical world, the more it resists, refuses the suitable apparel or turns it into private apparel—that is, it asserts its private self. [...]

[...] The whole nature of your independent and joint creativity involved a retreat from the world that you both enjoyed, followed by, in the case of books, an expression in the world—in which, however, the books appeared in your stead: a way of life that involved usual publicity—lectures and so forth—seemed to threaten that kind of existence to Ruburt, in which he feared expression itself would be diverted, simplified, so that the message that finally did get through would not be the same message at all as the original one. [...]

(Long pause.) Your television dramas, the cops-and-robbers shows, the spy productions, are simplistic, yet they relieve tension in a way that your public health announcements cannot do. [...] But the programs at least provide a resolution dramatically set, while the public health announcements continue to generate unease. [...]

[...] Unfortunately, many of your public health programs, and commercial statements through the various media, provide you with mass meditations of a most deplorable kind. [...]

[...] They involve intense meditation of the body, and adverse imagery that itself affects the bodily cells.² Public health announcements about high blood pressure themselves raise the blood pressure of millions of television viewers (even more emphatically).

[...] Nowhere do any medically-oriented commercial or public service announcements mention the body’s natural defenses, its integrity, vitality, or strength. [...]

[...] Pocket Books hasn’t scheduled Seven #2 for publication yet, as far as we know.

[...] At the same time, for many reasons, he had the idea that he was expected to be not merely a well-adapted natural person, but a kind of superself, solving other people’s problems, being a public personality, a psychic performer, and so forth. [...]

[...] He expected himself to be a public personality—that is, he felt the responsibility to be one, as if that had always been a goal, when of course it had not been. [...]

(Long pause at 9:58.) He had been shy with people, shy about reading his own poetry, though determined to do so, yet he felt that he should become this public personality, or to perform. [...]

[...] Any public service announcements, so-called, publicizing symptoms connected with his sensitive area, will immediately alarm him. [...]

[...] These individuals often use the physical world in the way that most people use the dream world, so that for them it is difficult to distinguish between a private and a publicly-shared reality.

[...] Now in my other books I have rarely commented upon public events of any nature. This manuscript, however, is devoted to the interplay that occurs between individual and mass experience, and so we must deal with your national dreams and fears, and their materializations in private and public life.

[...] Somehow, after supper, we got on the subject of Seth doing a “quick book” about Jonestown and Three Mile Island, something that could be offered to the public very soon, instead of material that would show up in a regular Seth book a couple of years from now. [...]

[...] Yet I could see that I confused Jane, for to make such a venture possible we’d have to change certain beliefs and values that are deeply rooted within us; especially those about personal privacy and our reluctance to “go public” with such topical, immediate material, instead of trusting that the Seth material will exert a meaningful influence in society over the long run. [...]

The Jonestown and Harrisburg incidents are indeed classic examples of the meeting places between private and public realities. [...]

[...] An overconcern (underlined) about the mechanics of publication, or the necessity of publication, or the wheres and hows of publication, or a sense of responsibility about the work, can indeed cause difficulty, but the basic creative expression—which has been impeded in the past by fears—should still be encouraged. [...]

[...] I’m positive, I said, that she became worse because of that book’s publication, along with the forthcoming publication of God of Jane, probably later this week. [...]

[...] There will be a television camera somewhere, and the most secret atrocities will find their way into the public eye. [...]

[...] So your culture believes that by publicizing crimes of whatever nature, you will somehow eradicate them.

Now to some extent, because of beliefs, because of the public’s new knowledge through television of new nefarious acts, some governments do refrain from the more spectacular crimes. [...]

You are used to thinking, however, that worry is an acceptable method of showing concern for private or public affairs. [...]