“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

He was, in a fashion only, sexually ambiguous, his mathematics expressing what he thought of as an acceptable male aspect while the artistic levels in his mind, now, he related to his feminine aspects. So he was to some extent a divided man. His creativity showed itself, however, when he allowed himself to play, when he forgot what he thought he should do, and did what he wanted to do.

(Long pause.) As a child, with no preconceived ideas in normal terms, you drew and wrote stories. Ruburt wrote stories or poems, and drew. The natural impulses were allowed their free play. Later you believed that artists should be artists. The concentration in painting should be so intense—should be—that there would be no thought of any other occupation. The concerns of the world, its progress or lack of it, the nature of existence—none of those issues would interfere with such an artistic vision.

Cézanne, as you know, was not a happy man. He could have been a far better artist still, for if his vision was intense, my dear friend, it was cramped, and it moved within itself in an agony to find a creative release that could never be found in the creative product alone, but in the psyche from which that product emerges.

You are aware of the nonsense connected with artists and poets and so forth—that they are too sensitive for the world, that great talent brings spiritual desolation, and that a man’s genius more often destroys him than fulfills him. Add to that list the belief that the great artist or writer concentrates upon his or her art so intensely and single-mindedly, and single-heartedly, that the focus itself forces the artist or poet to use those abilities to their utmost, or that great genius demands one-sided vision and a denial of the world.

An artist or writer, believing such selective nonsense, will of course find all of his or her other creative abilities a distraction, a bother, a temptation that is bound to detract from the main genius, rather than add to it, deepen its application, and add an orchestration to its subjective moods that would otherwise be quite lacking (all intently).

Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, for example, would have gone out of their minds, acting as it seems people sometimes believe that an artist should act. Their stories have been greatly romanticized to fit the picture, if you will forgive the pun.

The creative products are important. They are physical landmarks of psychic and artistic inner journeys, but what you do with your consciousness, how you extend it, is even more important, for as physical play is meant to lead to a future physical body that is mature and fulfilled, so the creative nature of that kind of inner play leads to future extended consciousness, an inner being that is the mature version of an earlier self.

(Long pause.) You cannot separate the elements of a psyche, approving of some abilities and not others, putting some in competition with others, without experiencing difficulties. The very nature of your painting is, and must be, determined by the quality of your mind, which is inquiring, which refuses to be cramped, which piles questions upon questions, while you think that the artist should ideally ask no questions at all.