“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In the first scene in the gallery he is explaining with some eloquence the mental and physical benefits of art, and its action as providing “a natural high.” The word “high” is important, for art, his art—writing, poetry—was his version of, say, the high mass of his childhood, where he and not the priest was in connection with the universe. By a kind of shorthand, the art gallery suggests the church, then, and his dedication to art, that is, to his art quickly replaced his dedication to the church. It became his vocation in quite religious terms.

Ruburt’s dreams will be part of this evening’s discussion, as they apply directly to him and as they represent the beautiful, even exquisite imagery of the dreaming self in general. The art dream (of June 3), as I call it, has its opening scene in an art gallery, which represents a conventionalized view of art. Ruburt used painting as an art in the dream rather than writing (pause), because it symbolized your joint ideas of art—to some extent, now—and allowed him to have you in his mind as he viewed the dream events.

Timewise and symbolically, the third scene brings us to the point where Ruburt is determined to defend his art, his dedication, to such an extent that he hides from the world, and symbolically crawls on his belly, all the while seeking to escape the dilemma by finding an open door, or by hiding from pursuers in the shadows. These efforts fail. One portion of himself is a character, male, with bound hands, and Ruburt must help this person over barriers, of course because his hands are tied symbolically behind his back.

One woman, another follower, for Ruburt is the leader of this group, pushes a landscape of yours across the floor ahead of her—preserving, you see, your art as well as Ruburt’s. Finally one of the women objects strenuously and decides to stand up and show herself. She is tired of crawling on her belly, for whatever reasons. That woman represents Ruburt’s decision to be done with the symptoms, to stand up, to walk.

[...] He has told himself that his art must be used to help people primarily—as if that had been his main goal all along. Art then becomes a method of doing something else—and that idea runs directly contrary to the basic integrity of art, and to art as he truly understands it to be. [...]

[...] As a general rule the production of any kind of art is a private one initially. That art may add to the richness of society, to culture—but art always possesses its own secretive inner nature, and with that nature each artist of whatever kind must always relate. [...]

Ruburt is involved with the production of art. It subverts art’s nature to some extent when it is asked to serve another master, however beneficial that master may seem to be—for art by its nature will always come up with surprises, and deals not so much with specifics or with directions as with overall patterns that must always be free to fall in fresh and unexplored directions. [...]

There are manuals that are written primarily (underlined) as textbooks or as guides to help others, in which there is no attempt made to create an art, but to state a case. In a way these are the result of two different kinds of value systems: art for its own sake, produced out of love, or texts produced primarily for the benefit and instruction of others. [...]

(Bear in mind that the connection between the artwork and tonight’s envelope object, the bill from The Art Shop, would be the pencils and paper stumps I bought at The Art Shop in order to do the art.

(The envelope object was a bill I had received this afternoon for art supplies, and which Jane had never seen. Jane does know the proprietor of the Art Shop, Marjorie Buck, who made out the bill. [...]

[...] As stated the object was a bill for art supplies from The Art Shop. [...]

[...] Marjorie Buck is the proprietor of The Art Shop, where I obtained the bill used as object. [...] Marjorie’s husband died—we do not know when—and Marjorie bought The Art Shop earlier this year. [...]

Art is not a specifically human endeavor, though man likes to believe that this is so, and no scientist is going to grant a spider or a bee any sense of esthetic appreciation, certainly, so what you have is art in its human manifestations, and art is above all a natural characteristic. [...]

While some art does indeed require a good amount of experience in time, the source of that art is itself timeless. You cannot put specifications upon it, saying “By the age of so-and-so my art should be thus-and-so,” for there is not that kind of correlation. [...]

Many such creatures merge their arts so perfectly into their lives that it is impossible to separate the two: The bee’s nest, for example, the beaver’s dam—and there are endless other examples. [...] It is foolish to say that the spider’s web is less a work of art because the web can be formed in no other way by a spider, since for one thing the differences in the individual webs are not obvious to you, only to the spiders. [...]

Now: The spider spins his web, and the spider’s web is a combination of art, craft, esthetics, and utility. [...]

Art is as much a science, in the truest sense of the word, as biology is. [...] Art identifies with the subject. In your terms, then, other civilizations considered art as a fine science, and used it in such a way that it painted a very clear-cut picture of the nature of reality — a picture in which human emotion and motivation played a grand role.

(9:53.) The true art of dreaming is a science long forgotten by your world.¹ Such an art, pursued, trains the mind in a new kind of consciousness — one that is equally at home in either existence, well-grounded and secure in each. Almost anyone can become a satisfied and productive amateur in this art-science; but its true fulfillment takes years of training, a strong sense of purpose, and a dedication — as does any true vocation.

[...] Your own behavior, customs, sciences, arts, and disciplines are in a way uniquely yours, yet they also provide glimpses into the ways in which various groupings of abilities can be used to probe into the “unknown” reality.

To some extent, a natural talent is a prerequisite for such a true dream-art scientist. [...]

[...] You must remember also that the art of the great masters was largely unknown to the poor peasants of Europe, much less to the world at large. Art was for those who could enjoy it—who could afford it. There were no prints to be passed around,⁴ so art, politics, and religion were all connected. [...]

Art became wedded, then, to phenomena directly before the eyes. [...] Art largely ended up—in those terms, now—as the handmaiden of technology: engineering plans, mathematical diagrams, and so forth. What you call abstract art tried to reverse that process, but even the abstract painters did not believe in the world of the imagination, in which there were any heroic dimensions, and the phase is largely transitory.

[...] (Long pause.) The art of drawing or painting to one extent or another always involves those two processes. An astute understanding of inner energy and outer energy is required, and for great art an intensification and magnification of both elements.

This was an entirely different kind of art than you have now. [...] That intense focus that united belief systems, that tension between a sensed subjective world and the physical one, and the rarity of images to be found elsewhere, brought art into that great flowering.

At more mundane levels the same kind of problem arises when art is considered according to its utility, function, or social value—as opposed to the idea of art for its own sake. Instead, of course, art must first of all be a private adventure, sought for itself. [...]

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. [...]

[...] Another reference to the Art Shop, and through this the object. In Elmira the Art Shop is located on West Water Street, which parallels the Chemung River through the heart of the city. The river can be seen from the back door of the Art Shop, and from the second-story workroom above where Tom makes his frames, etc. [...]

[...] These can quite possibly refer to the pencil lists I am in the habit of making up, of materials I need at the Art Shop. [...] I almost always have a list when I go to the Art Shop, and so does Jane. [...]

[...] The object is a strip from a piece of linen canvas which I bought a few weeks ago at the Art Shop, in Elmira. [...]

[...] Jane feels this refers to a young man, Tom, who works at the Art Shop where I bought the canvas which furnished the object. [...]

[...] Your civilization is organized around science and technology, and generally speaking, now, the arts and other schools of knowledge have been largely subsidiary. Long before the time of the Egyptians, now, there were sophisticated societies, utilizing some technologies and advanced in the arts of writing. [...]

[...] There have been civilizations devoted mainly to art, in which all other endeavors were considered subsidiary, and the quality of workmanship was everything, no matter what the product. Mass production was inconceivable, because the originality of each piece of art, or furniture, or bowl, held its value in that manner, and the idea of producing a copy of anything would have been considered ludicrous, or considered an act without reason.

[...] Writing was invented and reinvented the art lost, then reemerging.

[...] There was not a technological organization however as you know it, so that the technological achievements were considered somewhat in a fashion that your society now considers fine art—esthetic, to be collected by the wealthy, delightful, good for collectors but not particularly practical. [...]

Framework 2 involves a far vaster creative activity, in which your life is the art involved — and all [of the] ingredients for its success are there, available. When you are creating a product or a work of art, the results will have much to do with your ideas of what the product is, or what the work of art is — so your ideas about your life, or life itself, will also have much to do with your experience of it as a living art.

[...] Art is his focus so that he draws from Framework 2 all of those pertinent data that are necessary for his painting. [...]

In those terms, using our analogy, the recognition of Framework 2 would bring you from that point to the production of great art, where words served to express not only the seen but the unseen — not simply facts but feelings and emotions — and where the words themselves escaped their consecutive patterns, sending the emotions into realms that quite defied both space and time.

Give us a moment… Your world, then, is the result of a multidimensional creative venture, a work of art in terms almost impossible for you to presently understand, in which each person and creature, and each particle, plays a living part. [...]

[...] You could have done conventionally well, with portraits, and with other kinds of paintings, with your technical knowledge, but as you learned more you kept trying to put more into your paintings, ever demanding more of yourself and of the art, and forcing upon yourself a kind of growth and development that in a way became larger than the art itself—so that the art, you felt, could never be adequate as an expression of the inner realities of which you became more and more certain.

Art was art, but it was also on your part a search for truth through the medium of painting. [...]

Many of the most important art works have been done late in life, as you should know, and blossoming of the psyche cannot be given any age limit. [...] You did not want to settle for work of which others might approve, and get stuck at a certain level, even for money’s sake; but you wanted to pursue your art in private, and you wanted it colored by its own vaster canvas of psychic endeavor.

[...] Do not fall for the trashy concepts concerning age—particularly in relationship to art, for there there is far less correlation than there might seem to be, for example, in conventional terms in other areas of life.

[...] Art always serves as some self-disclosure, in which the art stands for the person, and the art is sent abroad, for example. The art stands for more than the person. In a way it reaches higher than the person, in that it expresses dimensions of imagination or inspiration that are heroic, and often by nature it speaks of capacities that cannot be fully expressed except through art.

The person, therefore, often “cannot live up to his art.” Ruburt wants to embody his art. He expects himself to possess all of the qualities that his art tries to entice from human nature. [...]

You felt that commercial art would work financially, because it belonged to the times, yet even then the comic book market, you felt, was falling beneath you as the public’s ideas changed, and (Mickey) Spillane’s comic strip fell beneath censure. [...]

[...] As the Mona Lisa is “more real” than, say, a normal object or the canvas that composes it, so is all good or great art more than its own physical manifestation. Consider art as a natural phenomena constructed by the psyche, a trans-species of perception and consciousness that changes, enlarges and expands life’s experiences and casts them in a different light, offering new opportunities for creating action and new solutions to problems by inserting new, original data. [...]

I’ve rejected all that kind of hash projected onto Seth’s books by others or myself—the assumptions that Seth must prove himself as a problem solver— or the importance of functionalism over art. [...]

The larger view is that art by being itself, is bigger than life, while springing from it; that Seth and my books go beyond that simply by being themselves. [...]

(I have for some time thought that Jane needed to sell her writings as a means of justifying her life—whether these writings were her best work was, in that sense, immaterial; she couldn’t possibly wait until her writing was a polished art before beginning to market it. [...] Oddly enough, I am sure that my work will end up very successful, both as art and in the marketplace. [...]

[...] He is not worried so much that you have not made a great financial success of your art. [...]

He feels that you have not tried to make a success of your art, but have used excuses while blaming him for using excuses; that he tries desperately to sell his books, while you will not lift a finger to sell your paintings; that if he waited until he did his best work, he would never have sold a thing.

[...] I didn’t grow up with the consuming urge toward fine art that she developed about writing at an early age. [...]

[...] There will be a man called Art, as Arthur, but called Art, also connected with this establishment.

(Before the session I had asked Jane if Seth could give me some more data on the art and gallery material begun in the last session. [...]

[...] At one time connected with the school of ashcan art. [...]

(Later Jane confirmed that she’d heard of the ashcan school of art.)

[...] Now, I am speaking to our friend over here (Art O., an engineer) because he may perhaps have a comprehension of what I am trying to explain, because of his background.

(Art O.: “Are these pulses extremely fast in our terms?”)

(Art O.: “Is this noninterval a moment of this existence?”)

(Art O.: “The analogy I get is of an electromagnetic wave, a carrier wave, and it’s rectified. [...]

[...] While you went to art school, you recognized that in larger terms art cannot be taught, merely basic techniques. [...]

[...] Your own are obviously not limited to art, per se, or art would have satisfied you so completely, and taken your attention so completely, that you would not have looked in other areas at all, so there is a place meant for you, in which your artistic—meaning painting—writing, and intellectual capacities form a synthesis in which all those abilities take part, and are fulfilled. [...]

[...] You think of a work of art as composed, say, of a theme or overall design, of various techniques and personal idiosyncrasies; and yet works of art, while transcending time, are indelibly impressed by the times also. [...]

(After supper we discussed various attitudes about work, art, writing, and other subjects that we’d held over the years. [...]

(Pause.) For many years you both pursued your arts despite living amidst such cultural beliefs. The pursuit of art was considered egotistical in a negative meaning of the word—selfish, childish or adolescent, and indeed many psychologists of the recent past considered it in the light of prolonged adolescence, or saw it as a sign of the individuals’ refusal to fully accept an adult role in life. [...]

[...] In your own art you worked relatively slowly, measured out your pleasure in a fashion, even thinking sometimes in the past that your talent required (underlined) periods of indecision and difficulty. [...] It seemed almost sacrilegious to think that the production of excellent art could involve fun—or worse, an active sense of irresponsibility, a joyful sense of ease, so that if a painting came too quickly you could not trust it. [...]

Generally speaking, large segments of your official society do not regard the pursuit of art as responsible behavior. [...]

Now art itself functions in a different manner. [...]

My remark about the lively arts had to do with the method of communication we use at the present time. [...] And this is what I meant by the lively arts. [...]

[...] And I have always enjoyed conversation, which is the liveliest of all arts. And I am speaking now of the social arts, dear Joseph. [...]

[...] You will have to look at this in an opposite manner than is usually used when discussing such arts. I believe that it is usually considered that an art is more powerful if it appeals to as many outer senses as possible. [...]

I enjoy the lively arts.

[...] (Pause.) They have loving emotional relationships, complicated societies,³ and in a certain sense at least—an important one—they also have their arts and sciences. But those “arts and sciences” are not based upon reasoning, as you understand it.

“Art is not a specifically human endeavor, though man likes to believe that this is so. Art is above all a natural characteristic. [...]

I had the same feelings of limitation concerning the session for April 9. In it Seth dealt with the creation of art: not only by “natural man,” but by other creatures—and yes, also the flora—of the earth.¹

[...] With all the opportunities of creativity, and with your own greater knowledge instantly available, you would be swamped by so many stimuli that you literally could not physically respond, and so your particular kinds of civilization and science and art could not have been accomplished—and regardless of their flaws they are magnificent accomplishments, unique products of the reasoning mind.