“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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.

“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.