“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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.) 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.

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.

When you overwork the idea of responsibility—or service to the world—you erode that pleasure. All in all an excellent session, of course.

The mail represents the voice of the world, the needs of its people. It also represents the simple thanks of readers. Ruburt has indeed felt a strong responsibility regarding the predicament of some correspondents—again, because he was not certain as to which purposes his psychic abilities should be put.

I may indeed dictate a new letter to you (as Jane said recently), to make our position clear, but Ruburt’s main position is not one of service: it must be one of pleasure and creativity. Pleasure and creativity automatically and spontaneously alter the world for the better, without methods and even without effort.