“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Pause.) He considered himself to be excellent at his work. It gave him a professional respectability, a feeling of worth and merit. He found it—his occupation—to be a responsible one, befitting an adult. The occupation filled many of his needs and expressed some of his abilities. In his spare time, however, for a lark, simply because he wanted to, he wrote his Alice in Wonderland—a book that is a masterpiece at many levels. What a shock when he discovered that the world was ignoring what he thought to be his important contribution to mathematics. He believed (underlined) that he should devote all of his time to his work, and could hardly forgive himself for his regrettable lapses into writing—and he was writing, after all, not even for adults, and not for young males either.

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.

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.

(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.

This session should be of excellent use, really, to both of you—and remembering the playful nature of creativity will help Ruburt get back to his book. He does that by forgetting the book, and playing with the ideas that it contains.