“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

At its very basis, regardless of all tales to the contrary, art is indeed love’s production. Ruburt writes because he loves to write—the activity of itself is intriguing, again, it is a method of discovery and accomplishment, of celebration. It is natural for him to be inspired.

There are manuals that are written primarily (underlined) as textbooks or as guides to help others, in which there is no attempt made to create an art, but to state a case. In a way these are the result of two different kinds of value systems: art for its own sake, produced out of love, or texts produced primarily for the benefit and instruction of others. In the second case the value is first of all to help others by stating as clearly as possible known facts about particular subject matters such as health or what have you.

If you are overconcerned with helping others, then you must first of all begin to question whether or not your creative material, still forming, will serve that purpose, and if not, or if there is a question, you give birth to hesitations and doubts that—again—subvert art’s free flow. An overhanded sense of responsibility leads in the same direction.

When that flow is relatively unimpeded then he is naturally attracted to subjective activity and to performance in the natural world as well. He enjoys seeing people then. To enjoy seeing people is a different thing than expecting yourself to be a public personality, however. Ruburt has been trying out a system of values that is not naturally his own. He has told himself that his art must be used to help people primarily—as if that had been his main goal all along. Art then becomes a method of doing something else—and that idea runs directly contrary to the basic integrity of art, and to art as he truly understands it to be. He therefore often felt forced to do what before he had done because he wanted to.

He had always enjoyed being somewhat disreputable—had seen himself and you prowling around the edges of society (as Jane had said earlier today)—not simply observers of it but to a large extent apart from its foibles, and certainly not mired in all of its conventional misunderstandings. He enjoyed dealing with it by sending the written word out into the public arena. He insisted upon that—the publication of his work. The books were to be his public platform.

Ruburt made gestures of unconventionality. To go on public television, join the workshops and so forth would not be Ruburt’s way, even while he felt that such a course was expected of him. He thinks in terms of individuals. He distrusts crowds. (Long pause.) He has no use for congregations—but all of those feelings remained largely unexpressed in later years.