“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You would make your creativity real, in sense terms. Linden would not. He would keep it safely inside a “play” structure — not play necessarily in basic terms, but a structure in which he would work with models, cleverly, never applying his creative abilities in certain ways to a practical reality. They would be outside, safely, in that context.

(I reminded her that I hoped Seth would comment on the old photograph of her in connection with probable realities, although now I could see that it would take him longer to develop answers than I’d thought it would. I didn’t think we’d get any material on my own picture tonight.

That child took a different course than this woman did (Jane indicated herself as she sat in her rocker). The dogmatism prevailed. The child’s mystical nature, while strong, was not strong enough to defy the church framework, to leave it or to rise above its provided symbolism. It [the mysticism] was to be expressed, if curtailed, relatively speaking. The mind would be harnessed so that it would not ask too many questions. That child (in the photo) joined a nunnery, where she learned to regulate mystical experience according to acceptable precepts — but to express it nevertheless with some regularity, continuously, in a way of life that at least recognized its existence.

(Picking up the photo of me:) Not in this picture, but quite alive, was your brother Linden. You insisted upon using your abilities, and tried for years to fit them into the commercial pattern, where they were accepted financially and socially, and in terms of your self-image. Finally you grew outside of the structure.¹⁰ When you did, you made the artificial division in which good art would not sell — but you would do it anyway.

(I reminded Jane that since she belonged to no religion now [having left the Roman Catholic Church when she was 19 years old], her mystical nature would choose other avenues of expression than religious ones; as in these sessions, for instance. Perhaps, I suggested, it would turn out that one of her main endeavors would be to enlarge the boundaries of “ordinary” mystical experience itself, to show it operating outside of accepted religious frameworks. I added that within those religious boundaries, mystics across the centuries and throughout the world have given voice to the same ideas in almost the same words, and that as an “independent” mystic Jane was in a position to approach the situation from a freer; more individual standpoint: She would be able to add fresh insights to what is certainly one of the species’ all-pervasive, unifying states. [...]

[...] He cannot turn himself or his abilities off … His activities would be strong in whatever level of activity he focused his energy, exaggerated in terms of others by comparison. [...] So that expression would come through poetry also with its “psychedelic” experience, regardless of specific sessions….

[...] As events worked out, Seth was halfway through Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality before I realized that these supplementary notes would work well as the first appendix in the first volume. [...]

[...] He tried to hold himself down because, he felt, the energy was so strong that allowed freedom in almost any direction, it would bring him into conflict with the mores and ways of other people.