“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Art is not a specifically human endeavor, though man likes to believe that this is so, and no scientist is going to grant a spider or a bee any sense of esthetic appreciation, certainly, so what you have is art in its human manifestations, and art is above all a natural characteristic.

The natural man, then, is a natural artist. Children draw, play with images, with language, with the sounds of their voices creatively and artistically. The natural man, the natural person, knows that art provides its own sense of creative power. In a fashion it makes no difference how many other children have drawn circles or triangles with great curious glee, quite astonished at their own power to do so. They may have seen circles or triangles countless times, but the first drawn circle is always original to the drawer, and always brings a sense of power.

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. It is as natural for man to paint as for the spider to spin his web. The spider has its own kind of confidence, however, and a different organization in which he operates. The spider does not wonder “Is my web as beautiful as my neighbor’s, as meaningful? Is it the best web I can construct?” He certainly does not sit brooding and webless as he contemplates the errors he might make.

Developments of that nature do not come to the young. Other kinds of artistic expression do, of course. Creative people do have more than most an inner sense of their life’s direction, even if they are taught to ignore it. (With amusement:) There is someone I know who tells Ruburt to trust his abilities. Very good advice—but that someone does not always trust his own abilities (louder).

Picasso, for example, had a supreme confidence in his ability. He was also quite content to remain a child at heart. I am not making value judgments, for each individual has his own purposes, and his unique abilities are so intimately connected with his own characteristics that it makes no sense to make that kind of comparison—but Picasso, for example, was an alien to profound thought.

You are still learning. Your work is still developing. How truly unfortunate you would be (louder) if that were not the case. There is always a kind of artistic dissatisfaction that any artist feels, any true artist, with work that is completed—for the true artist is always aware of the difference between the sensed ideal and its created actualization—but that is the dimension in which the artist has his being (intently). That is the atmosphere in which his mental and physical work is done, for he always feels the tug and pull, and the tension, between the sensed ideal and its manifestation.

If you have a mathematical problem in, say, geometry, you solve it in a certain specific fashion. You add QED at the end, and you work by prescribed steps along the way. But the creative problem is never entirely even stated: it is felt or sensed. It is psychologically experienced as a state of tension. I refer to a creative tension, but one that is of course to some extent also a state of stress, creative stress.

So in a certain fashion the artist is “looking for a creative solution to a sensed but never clearly stated problem or challenge, and that involves him in artistic adventure. It is an adventure that is literally unending—and it must be one that has no clearly stated destination, in usual terms (intently). 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, or following a series of prescribed steps like a mathematician.

Now Ruburt is doing the same thing, of course, and it is often easier for one of you to see when the other is involved in such behavior, than to see when you are yourself. It will be of help, then, if you each reinforce the other’s sense of self-approval, particularly in regard to your artistic and psychic abilities.

You always fall into more difficulties otherwise. 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. When you trust your abilities you allow them, through their expression, to find their own creative reconciliation, for the creative product is indeed a reconciliation between the sensed ideal and the world’s actuality.

Try to remember—and Ruburt too—a sense of freedom in your creativity. Have Ruburt play with his ideas and with the ideas in my book, and not overstress this idea of responsibility, particularly as far as my books are concerned. The book sessions should indeed be fun, even as children have fun with their creativity.