“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Long pause.) The more you try to live “a life of service,” or to concentrate primarily upon providing such a service, the more then your artistic self displays its private nature.

(Long pause.) Ruburt made certain correlations. He thought, for example, of his own pajamas that he wears now instead of the jeans he wore before, and it seemed to him that in all his strivings he had in one way or another also acted like your friend whose jeans kept turning into the Turkish towel: he had been trying to protect an important way of relating to the world, or to protect a way of life.

(3:49.) Ruburt began to wonder about television and so forth for publicity. He wondered if he did not have the responsibility, again, to spread the psychic message outward. Many different pressures operated there. In later years, as books were finished, the matter of publicity would rise anew, but his relative success meant that the issues stayed in the air, so to speak. Your discussion reminded him of how he used to be (pause), and also brought up in his mind the seeming contradictions of creativity, in that it is private, but usually ends up as some kind of public expression.

(Long pause.) You kept your own studio apart, say, from the house’s living areas. The whole nature of your independent and joint creativity involved a retreat from the world that you both enjoyed, followed by, in the case of books, an expression in the world—in which, however, the books appeared in your stead: a way of life that involved usual publicity—lectures and so forth—seemed to threaten that kind of existence to Ruburt, in which he feared expression itself would be diverted, simplified, so that the message that finally did get through would not be the same message at all as the original one. Yet still, because of misunderstandings and old beliefs, he still felt a responsibility to act otherwise, a social pressure to do so. (All intently.)

(Long pause at 4:02.) To some extent at times you each dream dreams that can be used by the other one, and this is a case in point. Ruburt felt that a public career threatened his own, and to some extent your characteristic, natural and absolutely necessary ways of relating with the world.

(Long pause.) End of session, except to remind you that the dream message also reflects material that I have been giving you concerning creativity and the stressing of pleasure above responsibility. You paint because it gives you pleasure initially. You have the sessions together and you do the notes primarily because these endeavors bring you pleasure. They exercise your curiosity, creativity, and sense of exploration.

(Pause.) If you want the mail material now, then give me a brief moment.

(4:12. Jane paused, lit a cigarette. It was still raining. The afternoon was quite dark and gloomy, the neighborhood very quiet.)