Session 441

SESSION 441 OCTOBER 9, 1968 9:15 PM WEDNESDAY Good evening.

(“Good evening, Seth.”)

Now, we will let our other people’s sessions go for now.

I have been aware of the Pitre request, and when any of your correspondents are in very immediate need I will always hold a session for them at once.

(Jane received another letter from John Pitre, Franklin, Louisiana, today.)

Some of the Pitre problems that he spoke about a month or so ago have already taken care of themselves, but we will have a session for him. Ruburt need not feel so responsible in such cases.

Now he has been ten or so minutes late at session time, and the reason I should think is fairly obvious. It was also the reason why he suggested beginning a session earlier (this evening at supper time) , though he did not know this; and in any case what he suggested, on regular terms, was not really what he wanted.

This was on his part simply an attempt for spontaneity. The spontaneous self had risen up against what it considered the rigidity of beginning a session at a particular moment. He began then craftily so that sessions began after nine o’clock, and then suggested the earlier hour. Now this is simply a minor and temporary element, originally because he has begun his Thursday classes and is therefore further regulated.

He realizes that a specific time is more practical. He enjoyed last evening’s spontaneous session (for Jane’s Tuesday night ESP class) , and such sessions, while they do not particularly add to our material, replenish his creative efforts and give him a sense of freedom. The spontaneity often, though not always, helps to focus his abilities, and provides us with an excellent trance state. The spontaneity provides its own training. You may have noticed that often when you miss a regular session, I have held a spontaneous one in class.

(“Yes.”)

Now Ruburt feels, at times unreasonably, for you have told him differently, that you think he shirks when he misses sessions. The sessions need regularity. They also need spontaneity, and for his own nature, I try to see that both needs are met. This is for the benefit of our sessions and for overall balance and efficiency.

He feels that sometimes (underlined) you do not understand his position. He feels that you do not realize that while you are both busy four nights a week, that he is highly creatively and psychically involved with psychic work, that it is not just business.

Now I am here now rather clearly. I know more than you know, and I realize that we will get through the material, that I have in mind, so it does not bother me when I hold informal sessions, sessions in which material is not always stressed. More happens in these sessions than appears in the written record.

Even with Ruburt’s difficulties as a personality he now makes more use, though he does not realize it, of his creative energies than he ever did. To a large extent you realize this, and it makes you more anxious for your own work and endeavors.

This was largely the basis for your reaction this evening. The psychic work with Ruburt has a strong spontaneous nature, and at times he resents, while he also needs, the regular schedules that you seem to require physically.

You are on the edge of a discovery in your own work, and it makes you uneasy, for you sense it, yet have not grasped it. This also had something to do with this evening’s reaction. Neither of you fully realize as yet the nature of the energies that are working with you, that give you meaning as individuals, hold you together, and form the framework of your daily existence, the balance of spontaneity and regularity.

Now you are concerned with our material and so is Ruburt. But there is also a strongly personal interrelationship between the three of us, and this is also important. If you, Joseph, have any questions feel free to ask them. Remember that the emotional element is behind all of our sessions. Without it there would be no sessions and I would not be here.

Now you are dealing with emotions, working with your portraits. Some of the people you paint are real, but you do not know them. You work within regular hours, yet within those hours you are dealing with unregularized emotions. You are dealing with personalities, some far different than your own, and forming these into paintings.

As you know both the discipline and the spontaneity are necessary. Now I know you. I know you far better than Ruburt knows you. (Smile.) Some things you block out. The personalities behind the people that you paint now run about that room of yours, and you try to put them into your paintings, and to make yourself strong enough to contain their reality, and you feel that Ruburt does not understand this. You do not understand all of it, but you feel the pressure of their reality, that wants to be expressed.

In some respects your work is lonely, and in some respects Ruburt’s work is lonely, but you react to it differently. Ruburt lately has looked for spontaneous release in anonymous social situations—the beer in the crowded bar. Underneath he is highly practical, and realizes that such endeavors, for him in any case, are not pointless nor a waste of time.

You burn and use energy at a different rate. He consumes it more quickly than even you realize. You consider such diversions therefore to some extent a waste of time, for they are not as necessary to you, though to some extent of course they are.

Your family in this life has always been determined upon longevity, and you pace your energy. Ruburt has not. The ways are simply different. Now your father paced himself unwisely. You are not making the same mistake. In many ways your mother was also wiser. Although your reactions at times may be different, and although you may not agree with me, still Ruburt will rarely be unrealistic in understanding or in utilizing methods that are highly practical, though neither of you may understand them as such.

You need time to do your own work, but it is also true that the intuitions and emotions that spark your own work are not dependent on time, and exist quite apart from it.

(Smile.) Some evening we must use your recorder so that you do not need to write so furiously, and let me talk to you. You will be able to talk back. (Humorously.) You may take a break.

(At 9:50 Jane paused, but obviously was still in a trance.

(“Are you waiting?”)

You are very good at recognizing the signs. I will give Ruburt a rest also, however.

(9:51. Jane’s trance had been good but she left it rather easily. The pace had been fast, eyes open often, etc. Resume in the same manner at 10:00. )

Now our sessions take little time. If they took twice the time you would still be very well off for what you get out of them. The recording of them does take time, and over this I personally have no control. There is a possibility that Ruburt could get help from his students here to relieve you, but I do not believe that you would want anyone at our regular sessions. The typing does take time from your own work.

Yet the sessions also help your work, and you cannot count the ways that you have learned from them. You are feeling crowded, however. This is to you, Joseph. Therefore I suggest that we have a week’s vacation. On your account this time, and not on Ruburt’s.

(“I don’t particularly need any vacation.”)

There seems to be a feeling of being crowded, and I do not like to add to this.

(“I do all right usually, but I don’t want things added to our schedule.”)

I never want you to feel that your work time is being invaded by the work in recording sessions.

(“I mean other things besides the sessions in our daily lives.” (Sometimes my comments to Seth are rather cryptic because of the time it takes to speak to him and write out the statement at the same time. Often the groundwork has been laid before a session, also, so that the brief comments merely reminds me of what was said earlier, without going into detail.

(This is the case here: Jane and I had discussed this problem of time before the session. Usually I have little trouble fitting the typing into our daily routine. It is true that we would sorely miss the sessions; much that is useful to us personally would be gone, even if this were the only reason we held them.

(It is also true that we don’t want anything more added to our present schedule. If something urgent develops we try to accommodate it in some fashion however.

(Humorously:) Then we shall take back your vacation.

(“Okay.”)

Do you have questions for me, not involving material now, or other people?

(“I haven’t taken any time to think of any.”)

I am far more interested in personality equations than in mathematical ones. I have said what I intended to say this evening. Now you may ask me questions or end the session, or I will begin some other material. Or you may take a break and think of questions, or just take as rest as you prefer.

(“Do some of those personalities know they are being painted?” (Here I referred to the series of portraits, most of them not finished, on the shelf in my studio.)

Consciously of course they do not. Underneath they know there is a communication, but they do not realize they are being painted as such. In one man’s mind he has seen your image however, and there is some telepathic communication operating both ways, but both of you accept the thoughts as your own.

This is of the man with the odd chin. You have two separate studies of him. He has two children and lives in Nebraska, and oddly enough he is a house painter who also wanted to be an artist. He paints flowers on memo pads.

His first name is Edward or perhaps Edwin. His last name, a strange one with a foreign connotation: Z E N O, (spelled) is as close as I can come, though I believe that is only the first part of a larger name. Zeno-mythlin (The mythlin is my phonetic version of the name Jane pronounced, somewhat haltingly.) That may be two names, perhaps with a hyphen. Edward Zeno-Mythlin; or one name is a family name.

You picked him up, so to speak, because of the personal association. He wanted to be an artist also. He has violent tendencies that he does not understand, usually well-hidden. The chin is a subterfuge, for it appears weak.

(“Which two studies are these?” I wanted to be sure.)

Two small paintings on your shelf. They are both of the same man. One is more a profile than the other. Ruburt knows. He has noticed them and disliked them. He disliked the person.

(“Okay.”)

There is great struggle within the personality however, shown in the sketches—an infantile nature that yet has abilities and struggles to use them. The man reminds Ruburt personality-wise of your mother, hence his dislike of seeing the characteristics so similar in the male and younger portrait.

(Naturally I found all this quite interesting. I was aware of none of it while making the two small oil sketches in September 1968. I now knew which two Seth referred to; strangely enough, I hadn’t thought of them as being of the same personality at all. I don’t think they bear any striking resemblance to each other, though in a general way they could be of the same type of person. After the session Jane told me that she knew at once, after I had finished them, that they were of the same person; she took it for granted that I knew this also.

(Actually, each sketch, perhaps four inches square, was done to solve technical problems I was concerned with in the series of portraits I am painting. Each was successful in its own way, and opened several doors. I might add that I was somewhat surprised at the ease and success of these two sketches.)

This is also another reason why you “picked out” in quotes this personality, through association. Give me a moment. I am not sure what I am after here. A change in your father’s condition, in that the steadiness of his condition is not as you suppose. (Pause.)

He is well aware of your mother’s vitality, and she is well aware subconsciously that her vitality still goads him into a semblance of reaction. She still acts as a stimuli, as you know. In one way she forces him to stay when he would retire, and when her thoughts are not strongly with him he will attempt to escape further.

She will not let him be done here, and he resents it when she rouses him. But he still feels arousement at her thoughts of him as well as her visits.

Now as she more vividly imagines life without him, this stimuli will wane. She is now vividly imagining existence without him. On the one hand you can say that he is weakening proportionately. On the other hand he is freeing himself proportionately.

(At the time of this session Mother is visiting my brother Loren in Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania for a couple of weeks, and cannot visit Father in the county home at Burlington, Pennsylvania.)

His struggles with his nurses (which are violent) are struggles to escape physical bonds, and to be away. He did not use his vitality in his manhood joyfully or fully or explosively, either in work, nor purpose, nor family. Therefore it lingers, and he cannot disentangle himself from it. He paced himself out of jealousy of his energy, so that it outlived him. It was not focused in work. It was unfocused.

Now. Because it was not used it outlives him. He kept it in isolation and was jealous of it, and did not allow it joy nor freedom.

(At 10:29:) He is in some difficulty at this time, now, according to your definition of difficulty. He is trying to leave.

He was jealous of all (underlined) of his sons, not because your mother seemed to prefer them, but because he saw his own energy and life force giving independence in ways he could not control. He knows better now, but he is still left with the dilemma of freeing himself completely, and beginning again.

He will be reborn as a woman. This much he has decided. He will therefore become more aware of the spontaneous nature of creativity, for he will bear children. Your mother and he, beneath all of their difficulties in this life and in others past, have a deep relationship. They will meet again under different circumstances, but not in the same terms.

The sexes will be reversed and your mother will make a fine husband. Your father has been twice a male, successively. He will adopt the female role, which is more natural to his personality, and be more at ease with creative functions at the spontaneous level. Your mother has been a female now twice in a row, and is ill at ease, and will do much better as a male. The mother-love experience has done much however to balance a too-aggressive nature.

Your brother Richard, and Loren also, are undergoing necessary experience as males. Loren in particular, in spite of past male lives, is strongly feminine, and your sister-in-law is undergoing her first female incarnation.

Far be it from me to give either Ruburt or yourself swelled heads, but in your cases we see the male and female aspects well-balanced, one of the reasons why this is your last incarnation. These elements are highly unstable and each personality works them out.

You have the impulse to think of the male as disciplined, yet the raw male elements are unthinkingly aggressive, and the raw female elements are indiscriminately creative.

(Pause.) Now your father could die this evening. I do not believe that he will. But your mother’s attention is completely divorced from him at this time, and he has been seeking such an opportunity. The young boy he has been helping no longer needs him.

(See the 398th session, March 11, 1968 in Volume 8.)

He never served, truly, as a male image for you or your brothers. Both of your parents, unfortunately in this life, served as uncomplimentary female images. This is why you trust the male qualities in Ruburt; why Richard chose a family in which he married where the males have been dominant, and why Loren chose for a wife a woman with more vitality than he.

This particular daughter-in-law of your parents pretends, or superimposes a caricature of conventionally accepted female characteristics to hide the basic male qualities. Their daughter knew this. She sought protection from her present husband, who is in a position to give it.

(At 10:45:) Your father is now trying very hard to escape, but your mother is now at this point turning her thoughts toward him in alarm. (Pause.)

Five people are holding him down. When he swears and is aggressive, he thinks he is showing those male characteristics, you see. Your mother is crying now to Betts, and she may yet hold him.

He sees before him the people he has known. In one way he is happy. He can show his aggressive nature, which is basically his creative nature, but he does not have to deal with it. Others restrain him. He has not learned the difference between violence and creativity, though they are closely allied, and he is frightened of the similarity.

He was (underlined) most jealous of you. You will yet do a portrait of him, for you cannot yet avoid the issue. Are your fingers tired?

(“Yes.”)

Then take a rest. You may end the session or I will continue along the same line. It is your decision.

(“Well, we’ll start out by taking a break.” 10:51.)

I have also known some of your people, you see. Now. At one time—now at one time Ruburt’s mother and your father were portions of the same entity.

(10:52. I thought this was the end of the session. Jane’s trance was obviously deep and I began to urge her out of it verbally. After a while she began to talk to me, slowly, yet gave every sign of continuing the session on her own, and in the highly emotional manner of the 435th session of September 11, 1968. This I wanted to prevent; even while she told me that Seth protected her, she began to whimper, eyes closed, and talk about my father.

(“There’s five people holding him down now. He’s struggling, fighting... there’s another nurse there, a different one...” I cajoled, talked, shook her and ordered her out of trance. I made her put on her glasses, drink wine, walk about, etc. Jane said she had no visions of Father; no projections were involved, etc. “Just a shadowy feeling.” (And through all of this, surprisingly I felt nothing for Father, no sorrow, no anger, no happiness—just that he had chosen his course long ago and would see it through in spite of anything others could do.

(Jane had resumed her seat. I was somewhat dismayed to see her abruptly resume the session, as Seth, at 11:05.)

Now. Understand that the main power of your father’s personality is already somewhere else (pause) , and is simply waiting for this errant portion.

A portion therefore of your father’s present personality fragment understands this. Now Ruburt has lately allowed his abilities more freedom and as in any endeavor he will make errors, and he must expect them.

This evening no such errors are involved. If he did not use his abilities obviously he would make no errors, but this is hardly a good argument. He is (underlined) better off with me than alone, and yet he must also work alone to develop the abilities. They grow more precise as they are used.

I have come through, now, to stabilize his system, as the content of the material frightened him. Now I presume that you wish to end the session. Circumstances have been good this week however, which is why we have had three sessions. On other occasions circumstances are not good. Do you have questions?

(“I guess not, Seth” (This week Jane also held a long session for her Tuesday night ESP class.)

We will therefore end the session. My heartiest regards to you both. These sessions are as beneficial as those containing more abstract material; though the material will never take second place, this is also a means of learning.

(“Good night Seth, and thank you.” (11:12. Jane, surprisingly, came out of trance quickly and easily, and felt well.

(And of course my father did not die this evening.)