“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

If you think that it is your personal responsibility alone to change the world, then you are always bound to feel a burdening sense of failure. The world is being changed through our work—but because that work is primarily a creative endeavor in the fullest, deepest meaning, now, of the word creative. When you hold the attitude I have mentioned, however, you begin to insist upon immediate creative results in the way that the shoemaker does, again—and again, we are not making shoes.

The scientist’s (Truzzi’s) letter had some good results, in crystallizing your attitudes in Ruburt’s poetry, and in passages for his book. It also made him think, however, that he was not changing the world in any way that mattered in any important degree—that those in authority did not even read them, and that even my latest work (Mass Reality) would make no inroads. He did not want book dictation on the one hand, for that reason. On the other hand, of course, he did. We will of course finish our book in our usual style.

(Seth referred to Greg, a young man who arrived here yesterday afternoon in a taxi. and carrying a box of a dozen long-stemmed carnations of four colors. The taxi waited, since he could stay but a few minutes before taking a bus out of town. Greg simply wanted to say thanks for the work Jane is doing, with my help. [He knows Barb and Jack Ebright—now separated—of Colorado Springs, Colorado.])

In schools, for example, there are courses in the criticism of literature. Art criticism, and so forth. The arts are supposed to be “not real.” It is quite safe, therefore, to criticize them in that regard, to see how a story or a painting is constructed—or more importantly, to critically analyze the structure of ideas, themes, or beliefs, that appear behind, say, the poem or the work of fiction.

(9.55 PM. “I’m glad I did have the session, then.” Jane said. “At least I got that straightened out, about the book sessions....” When I asked her what she meant, Jane said she’d been blue lately, wondering what good the work on Seth’s books could do in the world.)