“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(At 8:20 PM Jane called and asked whether she should have a session—she couldn’t make up her mind. I said I wanted more material on responsibility, that I wanted Seth to discuss it so it would help free her. “So I should have the session because it’s my responsibility to do it,” she said. “No,” I answered, “but it would be nice to have it in order to learn that your only responsibility is to get rid of the idea of responsibility. That’s all I care about.”

(“I guess I’m confused,” Jane said at 8:55. “I feel responsible to get more on responsibility, I guess, where this afternoon I thought I’d like him to finish that chapter in his book and get started on another one. Then you came out and said you’d like more on responsibility, so....” I explained that my idea was only to get more material on what Seth had begun yesterday—but that didn’t mean she couldn’t do material on other things too.

Years ago, Ruburt picked up that idea of work, applying it to creativity in his (underlined) own ways. You made it clear to others that while they be free, free on weekends or holidays, you yourselves were still involved with “work” (underlined)—all of this to show that you were responsible persons.

Ruburt saddled himself with a feeling of responsibility, however. At the same time of course he naturally resented such dictates. They tempered his own inspiration, narrowed his spontaneity. The idea of that kind of responsibility is extremely persuasive, however, in your society. (Long pause.) Because women were somehow regarded as less responsible than males, more easily given to frivolity, Ruburt also tried even harder to insure that he was acting in a responsible way.

(9:46.) At the same time, he recognized the excellence of our joint creativity. When you overstress the idea of responsibility, pleasure largely goes out the window, so he is now learning to redefine the term, “pleasure,” and to experience it in its many forms. He is learning to identify himself with his pleasures —a highly important point—one that, understood, can release triggers of healing energy and creative impetus.

The body itself is designed for pleasure. Value fulfillment seeks out pleasure. The entire idea of free will involves the making of choices between various gradations of pleasurable behavior. Value fulfillment even with the animals insists upon a qualitative enjoyment of life’s existence—one that automatically fosters a loving cooperation with the rest of nature as the individual follows impulses toward various kinds of pleasures. But the word pleasure often has a negative connotation to official morality. (Long pause.) If you follow the pursuit of pleasure in this creative manner, then you will automatically begin to discard faulty concepts of responsibility.

(Long pause.) Pleasure implies play as well, of course, and art involves a kind of high free play—an extension of it that cannot be tied to personal or to mass need. High play of that nature opens doors of excellence that responsibility alone can never touch, and results in far more valuable help to the world as a natural by-product than any self-determined behavior can, so these are the ideas that we want to stress, both in bodily terms and in psychic and creative ones, and Ruburt is beginning to understand some of that now. The idea of creative play—and in those terms of a certain kind of abandonment—should be encouraged; the kind of abandonment a child feels when playing a game, in which it identifies with pleasurable activity. It therefore joins with its own unconscious processes, and those processes are connected more intimately with the very source of its being.

(10:05 PM. “I got something at the tail end of the session that he didn’t say,” Jane told me. “I don’t know whether it was right or not—it involved you. I don’t know if you’ll agree: You can check with the pendulum. The idea of the trouble you gave yourself with the rib was connected with the guys coming to work here, to give you an excuse to do your thing and be isolated so they wouldn’t ask you to help, or strain yourself physically because you were already hurt. I got it at the very end. I don’t know why he didn’t say that. I waited to see if he was going to give it, and when he didn’t, I did.”