“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(However, I told her we might have to dispense with answering the mail if no other relief is obtained—anything to cut down on the feeling of responsibility. I did mention one good point, I thought: If she must be involved with ideas of responsibility, then let her think that she has already fulfilled her responsibility to help others, through the work/books she’s already done. No need then to carry it further. She did have feelings of panic to a milder degree at times throughout the day.

It should leave you with a sense of accomplishment. The ideas in the books go out into the world, where they will be worked upon, worked with, in numberless fashions, in ways that you may never know. You do know where the book begins or ends, more or less, in your creative lives, however, and you have the satisfaction of that creative activity.

(Pause.) Your mail presents you with glimpses of the people who read our books, from all walks of life, in all circumstances. You cannot follow their lives through from beginning to ending as you can in a book. You cannot write their “books” of life for them. You can comment very briefly on the small glimpses you have been given of another’s reality. The true interchange comes as those people themselves read our books, of course, and where our ideas intersect with their lives.

(Pause.) The feeling of responsibility to help those in desperate need is but one facet, however, for he has felt a responsibility (underlined) to get our material to the people as soon as possible—a responsibility to appear on television or otherwise, to promote our ideas, or to present them to the world—a responsibility that I have not encouraged.

(Long pause.) He grew up of course with many responsibilities in connection with the care of his mother. Again, there were no known rules of procedure (long pause) to follow as far as his own career was concerned. The idea of responsibility, however, began to overweigh the joy of creativity. So it seemed to Ruburt that the books were not considered to be enough: he was expected to do all of those other things beside. (Long pause.) That kind of responsibility runs directly counter to creativity. You understand that I must simplify that to some extent, but generally speaking creativity does not deal with questions so much like “this is true, or this is false,” it says this is, period.

Creativity often deals with material that is not known, not cut-and-dried, not even immediately useful, perhaps—so Ruburt would feel, for example, sometimes at least, that poetry was not responsible, or even that his own spontaneous activities were not responsible unless they were immediately useful in practical terms. At one time or another, the idea of responsibility was overlaid upon his ideas of work. All of this made him feel that he was not living up to expectations, that he was to some extent a failure for not doing all of those things.

Actually, of course, the creative abilities follow a larger vein of knowledge, and are responsible to themselves. They also adhere to a greater order that is far superior to ideas of responsibility as they are usually interpreted at normal levels.

It shows a change of belief —being willing to bring the body physical pleasure instead of the Sinful Self’s idea of, say, penance or atonement. Pleasure is good for the body and the soul. Religions have been denying the right of the body to pleasure for centuries, so changes in those attitudes are significant. I’ll bring the session to a close. It is enough to digest at one time, unless you have a question you particularly want answered this evening.