“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Nature realizes that there is no such thing as waste. This statement applies also to your earlier questions this evening about the sperm. Nothing in the stream of life is wasted, and everything, whether in your system of reality or not, is in the stream of life. You were born in the Depression, Ruburt shortly thereafter. Thrift was a necessity in those times. There were great contrasts in that period, however—deprivation, severest economic conditions, a spareness of attitude, set off by the greatest criminal activity, the wildest of parties. People broke the prohibition laws who never drank before, and did not like to drink. The ideas of thrift and the puritan attitudes were not the result of the Depression, but helped cause it.

When I say economy however I am not simply speaking of economics in financial terms—rather in the larger meaning of economy in sparing down, cutting out nonessentials, fearing to waste not simply money, but energy or time. All of these ideas are based upon the fear that an individual possesses only so much energy that must be hoarded, directed—not easily, but with fantastic force. The clothes dryer in the basement represents energy that you are afraid to use. You realize you have the money to run the machine, or to buy the washer. It seems somehow sinful, however, wasteful and wrong.

Ruburt has been trying to be economical in terms of money, energy and time. He differed from you only in that he carried your own ideas and his further in certain respects. In others, financially for example, he broke away first and you followed. The idea of the spare, poor young artist or writer, living romantically in a garret or poor apartment, has served as a handy self-image for many in their early years, providing a sense of dignity that enabled such apprentices to make their way. You chose the circumstances. You purposely chose a time involved in which writers and artists had it “hard”—so you cannot turn around then and blame the society. You each wanted to be apart from it to some extent. You (RFB) proved to yourself that your art could support you when you were young. You made good money. Then you immediately disentangled your abilities from economics in a particular fashion. You used your dexterity in “artistic” ways in your jobs—but the bulk of your artistic yearnings were divorced completely from the world at large. Ruburt did not know that his abilities could ever bring him money.

You have your existence now as yourself. Nebene has his existence in his own now as himself, and there are many others. Joseph in Seven is a representation of another portion of your being that is connected with Bill Macdonnel. Your “purpose” is to bring those diverse aspects together, to form them into your own kind of artistic production—to wed in your life and art those seemingly diverse qualities of spontaneity and order, spareness and abundance, beloved detail and wholeness, and to form in your life and art a new kind of synthesis.