“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(All of that naturally led Jane and me into talking about our own experiences in NYC after our marriage. We went over a lot of ground, and it seemed to have very beneficial, even therapeutic effects for Jane. I kept recalling things about those times, and so did she as the morning passed.

The Turkish towel represents the private nature of the self—private attire that you might use in the bath, of intimate nature that comes into contact with the body not so much to hide it as to dry it, give it pleasure, or what have you.

(3:33.) The harder you try, therefore, to force your artistic nature into the public system of beliefs, to teach it how to service cars, for example (intently), or to apply itself to the mechanical world, the more it resists, refuses the suitable apparel or turns it into private apparel—that is, it asserts its private self.

(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.

Some of this has to do with the complicated nature of creativity itself, and with the contradictions that seem to exist at certain levels. Your kind of creativity has always been together and jointly of a private nature—so much so that you do not even like to work in rooms too close to each other. You have often thought of living under more isolated surroundings. Ruburt has been fascinated at times by the idea of working nights, his ways of assuring such isolation. You began to accumulate some ideas of a different nature, wondering more about your responsibilities to the world as adults, wondering how “useful” art should be in the world.

(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.

I will certainly. Overall, I do agree, however, that our sessions ideally should not be tied to utility as a primary consideration, but should be freed of such considerations, at least generally speaking, so that their full potential can be expressed. A potential that belongs to all of art, whatever its nature, since it is daring enough, free enough to fly ahead of man’s needs at any given time, and to create a new atmosphere that transforms the nature of being itself.