“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.⁵ 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.*

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.⁶ 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.

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 results 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.

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. This child (in the photo), grown up in its own probability, has no such problems. The challenges are not there, either — only in latent form.

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.

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….

In a very simplified summary from Rich Bed: Jane was the only child of Marie Burdo and Delmer Roberts. She was 2 years old when her parents were divorced in 1931. With her daughter, the young Marie then returned to her own parents, and the home that the family had rented for a number of years: half of a double dwelling in a poor neighborhood in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Marie began experiencing the early stages of rheumatoid arthritis, but worked as much as possible.

Seth has discussed the members of the Butts family at times, including some of their reincarnational aspects. Six months before starting “Unknown” Reality, however, he made a few remarks that I’ve applied ever since to life in our physical reality: “Each person chooses his or her parents, accepting in terms of environment and heredity a bank of characteristics, attitudes, and abilities from which to draw in physical life. There is always a reason, and so each parent will represent to each child an unspeakable symbol, and often the two parents will represent glaring contrasts and different probabilities, so that the child can compare and contrast divergent realities … Your two brothers also chose the family situation. Each parent [both of whom are now deceased] represented opposites to them — but individual ones, and so they saw your parents differently [than you did]. Do not lose contact with them….”