“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

ASSEMBLY-LINE TIME VERSUS NATURAL, CREATIVE TIME. THE RATIONAL MIND VERSUS THE ARTISTIC MIND.

Some of Ruburt’s notes that you have not seen have further important insights as to such activity. The main point is indeed the importance of accepting (underlined) a different kind of overall orientation — one that is indeed not any secondary adjunct, but a basic part of human nature. As your own and Ruburt’s notes state, Ruburt’s more clearly, this involves an entirely different relationship of the self you know with time. You can make your own connections here, as per Ruburt’s camera experience, and your own dreams of late.

Important misunderstandings involving time have been in a large measure responsible for many of Ruburt’s difficulties, and also of your own, though they have been of a lesser nature. All of this involves relating to reality in a more natural, and therefore magical, fashion. There is certainly a kind of natural physical time in your experience, and in the experience of any creature. It involves the rhythm of the seasons — the days and nights and tides and so forth. In the light of that kind of physical time, which is involved within earthly biology, there is no (pause) basic cultural time. That is, to this natural rhythm you have culturally added the idea of clocks, moments and hours and so forth, which you have transposed over nature’s rhythms.

(9:05.) Such a cultural time works well overall for the civilization that concentrates upon partialities, bits and pieces, assembly lines, promptness of appointments, and so forth. It fits an industrialized society as you understand it.

The time that any artistic creator is involved with follows earth’s own time, however. The creator’s time rises out of the seasons and the tides, even though in your society you make a great effort to fit the creator’s time into what I will call assembly-line time. If you are a writer or an artist, then it seems that you must produce so many paintings or books or whatever as, say, an automobile worker must process so many pieces of the overall car chassis. Particularly if you want to make a living at your art, you fall into the frame of mind in which you think that “each minute is valuable” — but what you mean is that each minute must be a minute of production. But each moment must be valuable in itself, whatever you do with it.

Ruburt culturally has felt, for many reasons that have been discussed, that each moment must be devoted to work. You have to some extent felt the same. I said that the artistic creator operates in the time of the seasons and so forth, in a kind of natural time — but that natural time is far different than you suppose. Far richer, and it turns inward and outward and backward and forward upon itself.

Being your own natural and magical self when you dream, you utilize information that is outside of the time context experienced by the so-called rational mind. The creative abilities operate in the same fashion, appearing within consecutive time, but with the main work done outside of it entirely. When you finished your project,⁴ you had several days of feeling miserable, but you caught yourself and turned yourself around beautifully, and you have every right to congratulate yourself in that regard.

The same thing happened to Ruburt, and to some extent, with some individual variations, the same causes were involved. When you were both working on those projects your cultural time was taken up in a way you found acceptable. Creative time and cultural time to some extent merged, in that you could see daily immediate evidence of creativity’s product, coming out of the typewriters, say, like any product off an assembly line. You were “using” time as your cultural training told you to do.

(9:25.) When the projects were done, particularly with Ruburt, there was still the cultural belief that time should be so used (underlined), that creativity must be directed and disciplined to fall into the proper time slots. In other words, to some extent or another he tried to use an assembly-line kind of time for your creative productivity. This may work when manuscripts are being typed, and so much physical labor is involved, but overall you are using the “wrong” approach to time, particularly for any creative artist. This again applies particularly to Ruburt, though you are not exonerated in that regard (with some humor.

That approach does indeed fly in direct contradiction to the learned methods you have been taught. You have held on to those methods to varying degrees, since after all it seems that the world shares them. They are understood ways of dealing with events. Once again, however, with the experience of the last few days, you are both astonished by the magical ease by which work — real work — can be accomplished: events perceived out of place and time and so forth.

(9:39.) Trying to fit the great thrust of creativity into assembly-line time is in itself bound to lead to conflicts, dissatisfactions, and frustrations. If the proper creative and magical orientation is kept primarily in mind, other things will fall into place. You do not say to the creative self, “Now it is 7:30. People are at their assembly lines. I am at my desk: produce.”

Assembly-line time does not really value time — only as time can be used for definite prescribed purposes. In that framework, to enjoy time becomes a weakness or a vice, and both of you to some extent have so considered time. With creative people strongly gifted, as in your cases, the natural person is very prominent, no matter what you do. It therefore strongly resents any basically meaningless constraints placed about its experience. It knows, for example, how to enjoy each day, how to collect creative insights from each and every encounter, how to enrich itself physically through household chores or other activities. It dislikes being told that it must work thus and so at command of unreasonable restraints.

I say wrong, meaning no moral judgment, but the application of one method to a pursuit that cannot be adequately expressed in such a fashion. The assembly-line time and the beliefs that go along with it have given you many benefits as a society, but it should not be forgotten that the entire framework was initially set up to cut down on impulses, creative thought, or any other activities that would lead to anything but the mindless repetition of one act after another (intently).

When Ruburt finished his project (God of Jane), he found himself with all of that time that was supposed to be used (underlined). He also became aware once again of his limitations, physically speaking: There was not much, it seemed, he could do but work, so he took the rational approach — and it says that to solve the problem you worry about it.

At the same time the natural person did emerge. Ruburt followed his impulses and interpreted your dreams — all of which led you both into fresh creative activity. But it was not work, you see. What he needed to do was really relax, not prove that he could or should or must immediately begin another book. True creativity comes from enjoying the moments, which then fulfill themselves, and a part of the creative process is indeed the art of relaxation, the letting go, for that triggers magical activity, and that is what Ruburt must learn.

I will have quite a bit to say, again, about the magical approach, and I do think the term will help each of you bring Framework 2 far more into your experience. As far as Ruburt’s present situation, he should not wear, say, one pair of jeans for a week, but instead alternate, with two or three pairs that can be worn of course many times.

The underclothes are a poor kind, both for the weather and for someone whose motions are restricted. He should also vary his nightwear more. Your suggestion that he walk one more time, when he mentioned a program, was excellent. It made him realize how limited his activity had become, and again following the prescribed rational prescription, he worried about it.

In this session is material that will indeed allow Ruburt to get out of the present situation, but we will continue the discussion at our next session. I have given you some such material before, as I intend to give you shortly. With your own recent experiences, however, the material will be more meaningful and significant now, so that you can indeed put it this time to better use, and I will also be somewhat more specific. I will also go into any questions you want regarding your later dreams or their implications. It is good to be back with you again. End of session, and a fond and magical good evening to you both.