Session 679

Section 1: You And The “Unknown” Reality

Session 679

Each of you, again, chose your parents and environment.  You spoke in your notes (two days ago) of precognition in connection with art – an excellent point.  Precognition in those terms also applies at your birth, when ahead of time you are quite aware on unconscious levels of those conditions that you will meet.  You have chosen them and projected them ahead of you, out into the medium of time.

The conditions, however, while “set” in one fashion, are highly plastic in another, so that a multitudinous variety of probable events can flow from them.  Precognitively you are unconsciously quite aware – again in your terms – of the results of any given action or cause.  When this (photograph) of Ruburt was taken, he had already become aware of the overall interests and concerns that would dominate his future life, although the particular course of it had not been chosen.

Some of this throws light on current experience.  The religious background was there.  At his preference and demand, he changed from a public to a Catholic school after the third grade.  This was against his mother’s judgment.  She felt that public schools were better and more socially beneficial.  Ruburt, at that age – when he changed at the third grade – had quite a will then, in that he forced his mother to acquiesce to the change of schools.  He put up such a fuss, Ruburt, and held such temper tantrums, that permission was given.  He was stubborn even then.

He was always highly imaginative, as was his mother.  His mother was socially defiant, flaunting her beauty with the “disreputable” elements of society.  Much later, Ruburt would date the “disreputable” men in his environment, yet neither mother or daughter saw that parallel.  Ruburt’s mother by then wanted a respectable, hopefully rich husband for Ruburt, and could not understand why he chose men who did not conform.

Ruburt chose a background in which he was poor, as did the mother.  The mother was bright, but chose to bank upon beauty for escape (from her environment).  Ruburt tried his brains instead.  That material has been given (over the years in a series of personal sessions).

Ruburt’s nonconformance took the larger framework of unconventional ideas.  In the background, as a child under the organization of the Welfare Department, self-indulgence, small luxuries or too-unconventional behavior, were all dangerous in the framework chosen – the neighbors could report any transgressions to Welfare.  At about this time (tapping the photo) Ruburt sat on the lap of an adult man on the front porch, and neighbors duly reported this – the idea being that sexual depravity could be involved.

Ruburt’s mother knew that the child could be taken away were it proven that she was an unfit mother in any way, or unable to give the child proper care.  Well over a year before this picture was taken, in fact, Ruburt was sent to a Catholic home.  There, unconventional thought was not tolerated.  The inflexibility of dogma conscientiously applied to daily action was experienced, and within it Ruburt tried to apply himself and to focus his deeply mystical nature.

He remembered his mother’s constant criticism of him, but barely recalls his scandalized disapproval of her swearing, for example, on his return home.  He threw himself headlong into the Catholic reality, pursued it with great stubborn diligence, used it as a framework of conventionality in which he could allow his mystic nature to grow.

When that nature grew out of the framework, he left it.  All the beliefs that had once seemed so legitimate were then seen as hampering, and all their defects became plain.  While he followed the framework, nothing could swerve him from it, and here (touching the photo) in this child’s picture, you already have the unswerving nature, the great spontaneity, looking for a structure that will allow it growth, and yet give the illusion of safety.

The placid-looking child (in the photo) was as dogmatic and unyielding in some respects as Ruburt has ever been.  Yet leaving the church framework, Ruburt fastened upon the mind as opposed to the intuitions.  The child here was convinced that statues of Christ moved.  Without a framework to contain that kind of experience, the growing girl began to squash it.  Mystical experience became acceptable only through poetry or art, where it was accepted as creative, but not real enough to get him into trouble, or to upset the “new” framework.  The new framework threw aside such superstitious nonsense.  The mind would be harnessed, and art became the acceptable translator of mystical experience, and a cushion between that experience and the self.  He threw some of the baby out with the bathwater.

The mystical went underground, reappearing as science fiction.  Again, in the social and religious background of the child, unconventional mental or physical actions could bring penalties.  For a while the child could interpret mystical experience within the church – but even then, there was always conflict with church authorities.

Without this experience of following such a belief in the church so fervently, however, he would not understand the need of people for such beliefs, or be able to reach them as well as he does.  His questioning mind was exercised originally as he began to examine religious beliefs.  He was afraid that psychic experience, when he encountered it much later, might lead to a new dogma, and was determined not to use it in such a way.

His “conservatism”, meaning his strong recognition of conservative ideas, is used as a springboard.  He leaps from where he knows other people are into new areas.  He combats the dogma of spiritualism as much as he did the dogma of the church.

He leaped, however, from the framework of the church into another framework, one in which mysticism was experienced secondhand, under the guise of artistic production.  Idea Construction literally shattered that framework.

For various reasons already given, concerning your joint relationship, and your own purposes (to me), it has taken some time for a newer, suitable framework to form itself – one in which Ruburt is free to pursue mystic experience in a practical structure; one in which unconventionality of thought is allowed to continue freely.  He felt that this could outgrow the framework of his art, as it did that of the church.  The physical symptoms served quite literally as a framework in which spontaneity was to some extent at least allowed a mental and psychic freedom, until he felt secure.

(… I hoped Seth would comment on the old photograph of her in connection with probable realities …)

Probabilities are of course involved.  Remember the first few sentences of this session.  The general overall conditions were chosen, but many probable courses were concerned.

(As Seth, Jane pointed to the photograph of herself, taken when she was 12 years old.)

That child took a different course than this woman did (Jane indicated herself as she sat in her rocker).  The dogmatism prevailed.  The child’s mystical nature, while strong, was not strong enough to defy the church framework, to leave it or to rise above its provided symbolism.  It [the mysticism] was to be expressed, if curtailed, relatively speaking.  The mind would be harnessed so that it would not ask too many questions.  That child (in the photo) joined a nunnery, where she learned to regulate mystical experience according to acceptable precepts – but to express it nevertheless with some regularity, continuously, in a way of life that at least recognized its existence.

In your terms, the intersection with probabilities occurred one day in an interview the child had with a priest.  The event, in Ruburt’s terms, with its result in your probability, is mentioned in his Rich Bed (see Note 4).  The child in seventh or eighth grade wrote a poem, expressing the desire to be a nun, and brought it to a parish priest.  In your probability, the priest told the child that she was needed by her mother; but intuitively he saw that Ruburt’s mysticism would not fit into the church organization.

In the other probability, Ruburt’s desire at that time won.  He managed to water down the extent and dimensions of his mysticism enough so that it was acceptable.  In that other probability, there will be no long period of time in which the mystical experience would lie latent, and no necessity at all to put it into new terms.

The writing ability would follow as its handmaiden.  In this world the artistic abilities were put first, but the mystical nature was given greater chances to expand and develop.  And both were given the opportunity and the challenge of shattering old, historic frameworks, and of rising beyond them.

Ruburt here chose the writing structure, and has stuck to it as unswervingly as he once stuck to the church, yet always seeking a new framework.  For a while he idealized you.  Your guidance and strength were his framework.  When it became apparent that you were also human, and not a framework, he became frightened.  When you encouraged the emergence and expression of his mysticism, then you could no longer act, he felt, as a framework to contain it.  By then it seemed to threaten the joint structure of your lives.  He knew intuitively that you also used artistic creation as a buffer between yourself and mystical expression.

For all of the reasons given – and they are clearly given (in personal sessions) – he was afraid that spontaneity, mental or physical, would threaten the long-accepted framework of your joint lives.  If he went spontaneously forward in mystical experience, then, given his ideas, it threatened the conventional acceptance of his art.  Conventional ideas of art and writing, upon which the old framework, now, was dependent, no longer fit.

Once again his natural experience, he felt, was leading him beyond structures he had considered safe.

He had you to consider.  This experience of his was taking time from your art as well as his own, to his way of thinking.  At the same time, the mystical nature rejoiced at its opportunity, and sensed its potential.  Ruburt was determined to go ahead – he was also determined to keep the old structures and to ignore the cracks in them.  In part his loyalty to you was connected, and his responsibility as he saw it to keep you focused as an artist, and to let nothing distract you.  Yet here he was distracting you.

For a while your joint communication system was shaky.  He was afraid to go ahead.  The symptoms kept him at his job, at home, and allowed him to concentrate without outside distractions; kept him writing, with mystical experience dutifully translated into art.

The symptoms also served to focus that fantastic energy, while he figured out how it should be used.  He could not accept a new psychic framework while within it there were questions concerning your joint ideas of business, and divided loyalties about writing and painting; your personal fears, jointly, about spontaneity in general, and the need to protect your talents both from your own sexual natures and the distractions of others.

He could not accept a new framework, and he dared not let the old one go, so the symptoms became the physical materialization of these conflicts, and served many purposes.  The child (in the photo), grown up in its own probability, has no such problems.  The challenges are not there, either – only in latent form.

Ruburt greatly needs to realize that you love him, and accept him, as he is now in your terms.  He gets from you what feeling of creaturehood acceptance he has, that you received in your way from your family in early years.

Your questioning, Joseph, and your deep distrust of the world’s current theories, are shared as intensely by Ruburt, and your joint insistence upon discovering new answers is responsible for these sessions, and what will come from them.

You see his joyful potential, and he knows that you do.  Sometimes he feels lost, however, as an emotional human being, groping toward that potential, and he needs to be comforted.  As you know now, comforting him can be frightening to you, because it returns you both to deep emotional realizations and feelings that you sublimate in your paintings, and even to mystical experiences that you also channel through your work.

(Seth-Jane held up the photograph of me, taken when I was almost 2 years old.)

That child enjoys great feelings of vigor and safety.  In your family relationship so far, so good.  You were mainly surrounded by love and affirmation.  Your parents were young.  Your mother had produced two beautiful boys; and she was also a perfectionist in her way, and in her framework – one never understood by your father.

It was on the surface a very conventional structure, yet underneath, highly unwieldy.  There were dogmas.  The mother was expected to bear perfect children and to be subservient to the male, at least in outward fashion.

Your mother felt, then, that each played a fitting part in the marriage, in that your father had in her eyes great prospects, and she had given him two sons.  It was only later that she felt he had not fulfilled his part of the bargain, and that you began to feel insecure.  She had forced herself to focus all of her great emotional power into the marriage structure as they both understood it; but your father would not concentrate his own abilities into the cultural and financial structure as he had agreed to do in the tacit contract.

She had forced herself to contain her own reality in conventional terms – but to her way of thinking, he refused to use his energy in the accepted social and financial structure that each of them had accepted.

You began to feel, years later, as Ruburt did: that creativity was in its way dangerous, that it would lead you outside of accepted social structures, and definitely must be protected against normal family life.

(Picking up the photo of me): Not in this picture, but quite alive, was your brother Linden.  You insisted upon using your abilities, and tried for years to fit them into the commercial pattern, where they were accepted financially and socially, and in terms of your self-image.  Finally you grew outside of the structure.  When you did, you made the artificial division in which good art would not sell – but you would do it anyway.

You would make your creativity real, in sense terms.  Linden would not.  He would keep it safely inside a “play” structure – not play necessarily in basic terms, but a structure in which he would work with models, cleverly, never applying his creative abilities in certain ways to a practical reality.  They would be outside, safely, in that context.

The abilities that he possessed, that could be channeled into society as he understood it, were [so handled].  In such an eventuality, fragmentation occurred so that the abilities were dispersed, some directed into school, some into drawing, and others into his models.  Those creative attributes were separated so that they could be safely handled, yet expressed to some degree, and not completely denied.

Your own character is in its way more direct, meaning that you maintained a more immediate focus.  When that picture was taken, however, your parents were beginning to realize their difficulty.  Your first year was one in which your father and mother were filled with expectation.  Linden sensed that lack.  He was secure, but not as secure as you had been, as the division between your parents was beginning to show.

Linden uses words now as a framework to contain creativity and communication, rather than to express them.  You were more free-roaming here (in the photo) as a child because you felt safer physically.  Linden was far less venturesome in that respect.

Note 4.  Jane is treating the many, often chaotic details of her life in her autobiography, From This Rich Bed.  She’s been working on the project for some time along with her other books, and it may develop into more than one volume.