“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

To some extent, creativity involves you (pause) in a contradiction with the evidence of reality within your world. It puts you in a peculiar state of being—or in a peculiar relationship with the accepted world of factual evidence. The state of creativity can (underlined) be discussed as if it were (underlined) a separate state, like waking or sleeping. It can, in fact, involve waking dreams. In the usual awake state, in the terms now of this discussion, you deal with the available physical evidence of the world as it appears to present perception, that is, or with what you can see or feel or touch, either immediately or through physical instruments.

In the dream state you deal with objects that may or may not have a physical reality. You mix times and places, and the dream itself is a kind of completed act. Creativity allows you, while awake, to ignore or even to contradict what seems to be the hard evidence of known reality, either in large or small terms. The creative act involves you in a process whereby you bring from a mental dimension new events into the world that were not there before.

Ruburt may suddenly have an idea for a book. He wants to write it. In physical terms that book is not before his eyes. It has not been written, it has not been published. The evidence says physically that there is no such book. It is not a part of the world’s physical evidence. The idea for the book may come from a dream, or in that state of creativity where dreams reach toward physical actualization. Now Ruburt could say “I cannot write that book, or wonder how many pages it might have,” or think of the endless impediments that might prevent the book from being written. Instead, he simply ignores the physical evidence of the book’s absence, and creatively begins to write.

(9:35.) In your painting, you are constantly involved with bringing some event into the world that was not there before. You fill the gap. You recognize the absence in the present of the physical painting you want to produce, and your creativity brings that painting into reality. With ideas, with our books, you deal, both of you, with such issues all the time. There is so much physical evidence in the world. It has been put together through the centuries, in your terms, in countless ways, bringing pictures of reality, each vivid, each contradicting the other to some extent. When man believed the world was flat, he used his thought processes in such a way that they had great difficulty in imagining any other kind of world, and read the evidence so that it fit the flat-world picture.

The world’s evidence, the objects, sensations, and so forth, should be respected and enjoyed. It should not be forgotten, however, that such evidence gives a composite picture—not only of patterns of perception, but of habits of perception.

Ruburt has done well, following impulses, and the altered sleep patterns have indeed been beneficial; for his body, to compensate for the lack of normal steady motion, wanted the extra activity. (Pause.) For another thing, this allows a breakup of certain mental and physical habits—a gentle shock to the mental and physical systems that allows for beneficial change. Some years ago, just before you took on the second apartment, Ruburt complained in his journal that it seems as if the day was gray, or that color had fled the world. His condition had bothered his eyes then, and they recuperated over a period of time.

I meant to remark that the very late evening or predawn hours are indeed excellent times for creativity. Particularly since the minds of men and women (with humor)—are not so focused upon the physical evidence of the world, so that in a strange fashion the “burden” of that evidence is less, and there is some built-in advantage.