“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Once more, as I’ve done often in recent years, I expressed the hope to myself that in another probable reality very similar to this one I opted for the outdoor life in a much stronger way—even to living outside night and day for most of the year. I must be doing so right now! In that probable life I use a tent sometimes, but I cook and sleep outside as much as possible, except in the worst weather. What a different life! I’m still a painter, I often think, but perhaps not a writer. I might be a Milton Avery or a Paul Cézanne type of artist. More and more I’ve come to admire—revere, even—the single-minded, childlike devotion artists like Avery and Cézanne had for their art. Not that I want to copy Cézanne, for instance [I couldn’t even if I wanted to], but in that other reality I too chose to live the natural life in a more naive or clear-eyed manner—to sublimate myself before nature while at the same time trying to become master of whatever means of expression I can achieve.

(8:53.) Early artists hoped to understand the very nature of creativity itself as they tried to mimic earth’s forms. Poetry and painting were both functional in ways that I will describe in our next book (humorously, elaborately casual), and “esthetic,” but poetry and painting have always involved primarily man’s attempt to understand himself and his world. The original functions of art—meaning poetry and painting here specifically—have been largely forgotten. The true artist in those terms was always primarily—in your terms again—a psychic or a mystic.

His specific art (pause) was both his method of understanding his own creativity and a way of exploring the vast creativity of the universe—and also served as a container or showcase that displayed his knowledge as best he could.

That is the heritage that both of you follow, and have followed faithfully. It has an honored tradition. Also involved is, as Ruburt correctly picked up from me, a group of accomplishments that we will call the psychological arts. You are involved in those also.

The sessions I give you, in usual (underlined) terms, are a new extension of that creativity—but again, that extension has an ancient heritage. (To me again:) Your own writing, of course, is art. It is also a method of perceiving and understanding creativity. It is a method of learning that redoubles upon itself, and you are uniquely equipped (pause) to discover comprehensions from a standpoint that is most unusual.