“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Pause.) For many years you both pursued your arts despite living amidst such cultural beliefs. The pursuit of art was considered egotistical in a negative meaning of the word—selfish, childish or adolescent, and indeed many psychologists of the recent past considered it in the light of prolonged adolescence, or saw it as a sign of the individuals’ refusal to fully accept an adult role in life.

(Long pause.) In an industrialized society, people were trained to fit into assembly line productions. The imagination was itself considered suspect. It was felt that creativity served no responsible end in society. Again, you both pursued your own courses nevertheless. You did so, however, in the light of that psychological climate, so that while you went your own ways you also reacted to the social environment: you tried to show other people that you were indeed responsible—more, that you worked (underlined) not only as hard as others, but often harder (underlined).

This artistic sense of responsibility was given a thicker coat by what seemed to be psychic responsibility: it seemed to Ruburt that he should use his abilities primarily to help others, or to help solve the world’s problems, or to cast some light into man’s condition. Certainly the attitude of some correspondents was involved there. Actually, however, it was the simple extension of such a feeling into the psychic realm, where it was further hardened by many religious views.

If creativity itself was sometimes considered irresponsible, or “feminine,” or adolescent, then psychic activity, he discovered, seemed to be held in an even murkier light, in which the abilities themselves were sometimes thought of not as creative enhancements but as symptoms of feminine weakness and irresponsibility. He has recognized that, of course, to some degree, and written about it.

It added considerably, however, to the thick coat of responsibility that he placed about his own shoulders. He is still harder on women than he is on men in that regard. In that light then again, to stand somewhat apart from my material, to question it as a matter of principle, became a sign of responsibility. It showed that he was not a frivolous female, fancifully following each stray imaginative trance image.