“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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.)

If those abilities did lie in other directions, he would have felt strong impulses to hold sessions on the behalf of others, and would long ago have taken that course, so here again there are misunderstandings.

Our art can help alter people’s views of themselves, change the mental conditions and the psychic atmosphere of our readers. To that extent they activate, say, the entire body defense mechanism, and this is much more likely to happen than it would be if we addressed ourselves to each isolated symptom or individual problem.

(I added that I thought I was already doing, at least to some extent, what Seth advocated in the session—throwing away any sense of responsibility or financial reward in painting, at this time at least. I trusted that whatever might result from the painting would be beneficial in various ways, possibly including the financial if the need arose. I explained to Jane that I’d reached the point in the last year where I just couldn’t let anything interfere with the act of painting itself—and that I thought she needed an attitude like that in regard to her own work very badly. I could have said [in retrospect] that my attitude stemmed at least to a large degree from my watching her struggle with her own hang-ups. Not that I didn’t think I’d reach it on my own anyhow.

(“I’d sacrifice every cent we’ve got if it would get us that,” I said, “because then we’d both be free. I’d sacrifice this house and live in a cheap apartment on Water Street again, if it would help, and we just had royalty money to live on.” The other day I’d told her we had enough money to live for at least five years—and more—without earning anything, and I said it again now. “The funny thing is, if we were that free yet committed, we wouldn’t have to worry about money because we’d automatically do the right things that would get us more whenever we needed it, just by doing the things we love to do....”