“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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

(Slowly:) Chapter Six. Now: Any real discussion of genetic heritage must also bring up questions involving free will and determinism,² and to some extent those issues must also lead to questions concerning the nature of the reasoning mind itself.

The reasoning mind is a uniquely human and physical phenomenon. (Long pause.) It depends upon conscious thinking, problem-solving methods, and it is a natural human blossoming, a spectacular mental development in its own framework of activity.

“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.”

“The true artist is involved with the inner workings of himself with the universe—a choice, I remind you, that he or she has made, and so often the artist does indeed forsake the recognized roads of recognition. And more, seeing that, he often does not know how to assess his own progress, since his journey has no recognizable creative destination. By its nature art basically is meant to put each artist of whatever kind into harmony with the universe, for the artist draws upon the same creative energy from which birth emerges.”

In a strange way, determinism has always seemed lacking as a concept to Jane and me—for if it means what it’s supposed to mean, then surely human beings set up the parameters within which determinism is said to operate. I see this as a contradiction of the notion that the individual is entirely at the mercy of his or her history and of nature. How can we be, if through the ages we’ve created that history and nature against which we react? In other words, on joint and individual scales, vast though they may be, we do create our joint and individual realities.