“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Most people, however, are so utterly serious that they suspect their own creativity. They expect that its products will be unreal or not valid in the physical world. Yet there is a great correlation between what you think of as creativity, altered states of consciousness, play, and “spiritual” development.

You pay little heed, however. You think that this is just your “imagination.” The unknown reality is alive in your own psyche. There are hints of it in all of your experience. You would not be alive, in your terms, if first you did not imagine yourself as you are. Play is, in fact, one of the most practical methods of survival, both individually and for the species. Within its framework lie the secrets of creativity, and within the secrets of creativity lie the secrets of being.

Some wanted me to identity their counterparts for them. One student (Fred), a contractor, said little. Instead, during the last week he let his own creative imagination go wherever it might while he held the general idea in his mind. He played with the concept, then. In a way his experiences were like those of a child — open, curious, filled with enthusiasm. As a result he himself discovered a few of his counterparts.²

(Pause.) When you think, colon: “Life is earnest,” and decide to put away childish things, then often you lose sight of your own creativity and become so deadly serious that you cannot play, even mentally. Spiritual development becomes a goal that must be attained. The goal is to be achieved through hard work, and as long as you believe this you do not understand what the spirit is.

(My counterpart, Peter Smith, and I are both professional artists; we’re roughly of an age, with strong interests in other forms of creativity, such as writing, and in myth and fantasy.¹ A number of the similarities and differences between Jane and me should be obvious to our readers; she also does quite a lot of painting. [...]