“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This morning I showed Jane the portrait in oils that I’m working on. It’s of one of my imaginary male heads, and I began it a week ago, following Seth’s material on art for me in the private session for April 9. [See Note 1 for the last session.] I explained to Jane that even while it’s incomplete, the painting contains improvements that I can already tell will be developed further in the next one. Once I start a work in a certain mode, it becomes somewhat set in that expression; this is inevitable if one is to ever complete the physical painting. Those sensed, additional improvements have to wait for the next effort: A creative tension between the present and the future is set up, then—one that I’ve often felt, an impatience to leap ahead to the next step even while I’m still working out the current one. I asked that Seth comment upon the painting tonight if he cared to.

A hearty good evening—and tell our friend (Jane) to be more playful—work at it, I said (with much humor).

More is involved, of course. I’ve read that mathematical prodigies are in love with their numbers, and rely upon their dependability in an often unsure world. Jane has a deep love for words. Words, however, can be very elusive tools, and vary from language to language, although intrinsically through the Seth material Jane conveys depths of meaning that continue to develop within whatever language others may cast it. This psychological growth, and the many challenges involved, set her work apart from the mental calculator’s numbers or the musician’s notes, which are ever the same: Those friendly columns of figures, for instance, add up to identical sums in any language. In her own direct cognition Jane deals with feelings and ideas that are often quite divorced from any such reliability and acceptance.