“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(It’s hard for us to believe that five and a half weeks have passed following Jane’s last regularly scheduled session, the 906th for March 6. She’s held but one private session, on April 9, since.

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

While Jane has been enjoying many periods of ease and relaxation, she’s also had bouts of blueness over her general stiffness and walking difficulties [her “symptoms”]. But she’s finally dispensed with the last stages of her cold, which had turned out to be much heavier than mine, and is feeling a resurgence of energy for the sessions. Her own work has been going well for the most part, however—she expects to finish Chapter 12 of God of Jane tomorrow. Because of her concentration on that hook she hasn’t done much on her book of poetry, If We Live Again, since late February; and as I mentioned in the Preface for Dreams, she laid aside her third Seven novel, Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time, in May 1979 when she began God of Jane. As for myself, I’ve progressed to working with Session 860 [for June 13, 1979], which bridges chapters 8 and 9 in Mass Events.

Today Jane reread her recent sessions for Dreams; she wanted to resume work on the book tonight, and picked up on it from Seth throughout the day. She told me bits of the material at times, but I didn’t retain them. [She also relayed to me Seth’s comments about an article on bird migration that I read to her while we were having lunch, but I lost those too.] Jane called me early for the session—at 8:20, while I was still busy with Mass Events. She wanted to get started: “I still feel nervous about going back to the book….”

(Still slowly at 8:59:) Other creatures have their own kinds of mental activity, however. They also have different kinds of immediate perceptions of reality. All species are united by their participation in emotional states, however. It is not just that all species of life have feeling, but that all participate in dimensions of emotional reality. It has been said that only men have a moral sense, that only men have free will—if indeed free will is possible at all. The word “moral” has endless connotations, of course. Yet animals have their own “morality,” their own codes of honor, their own impeccable senses of balance with all other creatures. (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.

The body is equipped to perform far better, in a variety of ways, than you give it credit for, however—but the fact remains that the genetic structure focuses volition. The genetic apparatus and the chromosomal messages actually contain far more information than is ever used. That genetic information can, for example, be put together in an infinite number of ways. (Long pause.) The species cares for itself in the event of any possible circumstance, so that the genetic messages also carry an endless number of triggers that will change genetic combinations if this becomes necessary.

Now in the greater framework of reincarnational existences you choose your roles, or your lives, but the lines that you speak, the situations that you meet, are not predetermined. “You” live or exist in a larger framework of activity even while you live your life, and there is a rambunctious interplay between the yous in time and the you outside of time.

You have, however, become so specialized in its use, so prejudiced in its favor, that your tendency is to examine all other kinds of consciousness using the reasoning mind as the only yardstick by which to judge intelligent life. You are surrounded everywhere by other kinds of consciousness whose validity you have largely ignored, whose psychic brotherhood you have dismissed—kinds of consciousness in the animal kingdom particularly, that deal with a different kind of knowing, but who share with you the reality of keen emotional experience, and who are innately aware of biological and psychic values, but in ways that have escaped your prejudiced examination.

(10:01 P.M. “Gee, I thought some of that was great while I was giving it, but now I can’t remember what it was,” Jane said as soon as Seth had gone. “But I feel better…. I think I got all kinds of goodies out of all proportion to time.”

“All creatures of whatever degree have their own appreciation of esthetics. Many such creatures merge their arts so perfectly into their lives that it is impossible to separate the two: the spider’s web, for example, or the beaver’s dam—and there are endless other examples. This is not ‘blind instinctive behavior’ at all, but the result of well-ordered spontaneous artistry.

“Art is not a specifically human endeavor, though man likes to believe that this is so. Art is above all a natural characteristic. I try to straddle your definitions—but flowers, for example, in a fashion see themselves as their own artistic creations. They have an esthetic appreciation of their own colors—a different kind, of course, than your perception of color. But nature seeks to outdo itself in terms that are most basically artistic, even while those terms may also include quite utilitarian purposes. The natural man, then, is a natural artist. In a sense, painting is man’s natural attempt to create an original but coherent, mental yet physical interpretation of his own reality—and by extension to create a new version of reality for his species.”

(To me, loudly:) “You are still learning. Your work is still developing. How truly unfortunate you would be if that were not the case! There is always a kind of artistic dissatisfaction that any true artist feels with work that is completed, for he is always aware of the tug and pull, and the tension, between the sensed ideal and its manifestation. In a certain fashion the artist is looking for a creative solution to a sensed but never clearly stated problem or challenge, and it is an adventure that is literally unending. It must be one that has no clearly stated destination, in usual terms. In the most basic of ways, the artist cannot say where he is going, for if he knows ahead of time he is not creating but copying.