“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I was typing the first portion of last night’s session when I heard President Reagan giving his anxiously awaited first address to Congress; he spoke on economic issues mainly. I took a break at 9:15 to watch some of his speech on TV. Jane was relaxed on the couch as usual. Eventually, however, she surprised me by saying she’d try for a session. Earlier today she’d said she would have one tomorrow night instead.

(Pause.) Ruburt has felt too responsible to develop his psychic abilities, to produce another “psychically inspired” work of his own. The sense of responsibility of that kind stifles love, which must be free to form its own creativity in its own fashion. Therefore, left alone, Ruburt writes freely, and in an inspired nature because that is (underlined) his nature. It is what he loves to do. When he becomes overly concerned with ideas of responsibility to use his talent, then the love beneath them is smothered to some extent and denied its flow.

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 felt that your visitors came to see the public image (as they certainly did, I’d say), and felt inferior by contrast. To some extent he became divorced from some of his own feelings, for they seemed now beneath him.

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.

It seemed that this would be thrust upon him, however—that it was expected, and that indeed furthermore he should expect such performance from himself. (Long pause.) His own earlier attitudes about such matters began to seem cowardly, so he tried to divorce himself from them. That idea, however, together with the idea of responsibility, you see, was always in the background.

(Long pause.) Beside this, he felt that such a performance would alter the direction his work would take in ways that would be detrimental overall, for the broadening quality of that kind of discourse could only be as extensive in scope as the quality of his audience’s understanding, so that the material might become too tailored to public need or consumption—tied up in answering conventional questions—an excellent point, by the way.

Ruburt’s nature leads to periods of painting and poetry and subjective exploration of unconventional thought. He felt that he should be doing other things, however: he should be using (underlined) his time better.

His body is relaxing because it needs to, and he is finally allowing it. He was able to see the quality of his poetry today for his book. The poetry adds to the world simply by its being. Art is not meant to be a prescription. It is a celebration. People who celebrate do not need prescriptions.

(I intend to now begin compiling a list of questions for Seth that grow out of his recent sessions—hence his remark above about such a list. We’ve talked about this a number of times, and I’ve also mentioned it in session notes. Coupled with this will be my compilation of brief quotes from the sessions—making points for Jane’s quick perusal that I think are especially good. This list can also be used as a guide to refer us back to the body of material from which any particular quote is taken.)