“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The death connection enters in because the bill was filled out by the worker at the lumberyard who obtained and cut the Masonite so it would fit into our station wagon. The worker—whose name we do not know, but could easily learn—became quite talkative when he learned I planned to use the Masonite as support for paintings. He described to us in some detail how he had a portrait of himself drawn during the Second World War, when he was overseas. War…death. The conversation was unusual in that the worker explained how the artist drew his face as though it was symmetrical, whereas in reality it is quite asymmetrical, with an impaired eye.

(“A tournament, perhaps symbolic. A crossing, as of swords.” Jane was sure this referred to the story told us by the worker at the lumberyard, who procured the Masonite for me, concerning his war service, his portrait, etc., done while he was in the service. The worker made out the bill which served as object.

(“An oval shape, or eye shape—that is, this kind of an eye, you see, inside of a rectangle or triangle.” Jane pointed to her own eye while giving this data. It is very good. As stated earlier the worker at the lumberyard who procured the Masonite for me, then made out the bill used as object, had a bad eye. It will be recalled that the worker described a portrait drawn of him while he was in the service; and that the artist making the portrait drew him with a symmetrical face, whereas his face is decidedly not symmetrical.

Nearing had to admit that while inequalities still were rampant, the basic conditions of the workers had vastly improved during his lifetime. There were indeed goods for all—yet those goods seemed to produce little peace of mind, and the workers, through strikes and so forth, demanded more and more a cut of the pie—as if to assuage some inner hunger.

[...] He grew sore with the worker’s plight, and felt that thoughts of art, spiritual merit, or pretensions were meaningless if men were ill-fed. [...]

[...] And what good was the most equitable arrangement of land or property, of food or goods, if the ordinary worker was still somehow basically discontented?

She told Ruburt that she felt herself to be an inferior person, unable to cope, an individual who was not able to hold her own with her co-workers or the world at large.

She had wanted to leave her job for another one but was afraid of taking the step, so she created circumstances in which the decision was seemingly taken out of her hands; it would appear as if she were the victim of unfeeling co-workers, jealous and misunderstanding, and a boss who would not stand up for her.

[...] Jane and I had been talking about trying to check out some of this material, since presumably records concerning Frank Watts would exist locally; and possibly people who knew him, other than Miss Callahan, and a co-worker of Jane’s at the gallery when the sessions began, Mrs. Borst, might be found who would help us verify any data Seth gave. [...]

[...] Jane’s co-worker at the gallery, Mrs. Borst, who is now retired, had stated definitely that she had known a Frank Watts who had died in the 1940’s, and had also known his sister Treva.)

[...] The other was an office worker.

[...] He doesn’t want to leave town, which is the place of his birth, to find a better job; nor does it occur to him to try and understand better the experiences of his fellow workers. [...]

[...] (Louder:) What difference can it make to the world if you are a better salesperson, or plumber, or office worker, or car salesman, for Christ’s sake? [...]

[...] I explained to Jane that much of it was a rehash of what I’ve told other social service workers. [...]

[...] To insure the safety of workers, however, over 55,000 curies of radioactive krypton-85 gas will first be vented from the containment building into the atmosphere.

[...] In two recent envelope experiments involving my place of employment, this word had cropped up in connection with the death of an older fellow worker; mine referring to grave, or underground, because Jane instinctively disliked the idea of graves. The older worker had been named Ezra Havens. [...]

(Concerning the new product mentioned; John said that fellow workers recently visited the laboratories in Chicago and told him about one scientist in particular who was testing, or wanted to test, or experiment for problems of the central nervous system, but the budget insistence made this difficult. [...]

[...] To insure the safety of all workers, however, the plan is that over a period of several weeks a large quantity of radioactive krypton gas must first be vented into the atmosphere from the containment building. [...]

He is slightly worried about the social-worker appointment. [...]

(The furnace, knocked out in last June’s flood, hasn’t been repaired yet because of a shortage of skilled workers in the area. [...]

[...] But even the sloppy workers will indeed pick up your ideas of excellence, and try to translate them, finding even a new satisfaction in their work—but only if you think of what you want as a product, and not what you fear you will get instead.

[...] Early in January of this year (1982), for example, decontamination workers in a pair of buildings located between the plant’s two reactors triggered alarms when they inadvertently blew radioactive dust into the buildings from a drain filled with contaminated particles. [...]

[...] I repeat, however, that in this country no public citizen has been either seriously injured or killed in an accident at a commercial nuclear facility (as have a few workers).

[...] However, they may be psychics, social workers, psychologists, artists, or in the religions. [...]

[...] If you are a writer or an artist, then it seems that you must produce so many paintings or books or whatever as, say, an automobile worker must process so many pieces of the overall car chassis. [...]

[...] One was a shipyard worker. [...]

[...] John is also an indefatigable worker at finding people who are willing to devote free time to typing up extra copies of the material, and he had news for us on this score also. [...]

Now: generally again, such communities have teachers, judges, lawyers, dentists, some farmers on the outskirts of town, some factory workers, a sufficient number of ministers, and some car lots. [...]