“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Cells, however, possess an inner knowledge of their own shapes, and of any other shapes in their immediate environment—this apart from the communication system mentioned earlier that operates on biological levels between all cells.

To some important degree, cells possess curiosity, an impetus toward action, a sense of their own balance, and a sense of being individual while being, for example, a part of a tissue or an organ. The cell’s identification biologically is highly connected with this [very] precise knowledge of its own shape, or sometimes shapes. Cells, then, know their own forms.

In highly complicated cellular structures like yourselves (pause), with your unique mental properties, you end up with a vital inborn sense of shape and form. The ability to draw is a natural outgrowth of this sensing of shape, this curiosity of form. On a quite unconscious level you possess a biological self-image that is quite different from the self that you see in a mirror. It is a knowledge of bodily form from the inside out, so to speak, composed of cellular shapes and organizations, operating at the maximum. The simple cell, again, has a curiosity about its environment, and on your much more advanced cellular level your own curiosity is unbounded. It is primarily felt as a curiosity about shapes: the urge to touch, to explore, to feel edges and smooth places.

There is particularly a fascination with space itself, in which, so to speak, there is nothing to touch, no shapes to perceive. You are born, then, with a leaning toward the exploration of form and shape in particular.

(9:19.) Remember that cells have consciousness, so while I say these leanings are biologically entwined, they are also mental properties. Drawing in its simplest form is, again, an extension of those inclinations, and in a fashion serves two purposes. Particularly on the part of children, it allows them to express forms and shapes that they see mentally first of all. When they draw circles or squares, they are trying to reproduce those inner shapes, transposing those images outward into the environment—a creative act, highly significant, for it gives children experience in translating inner perceived events of a personal nature into a shared physical reality apparent to all.

When children draw objects they are successfully, then, turning the shapes of the exterior world into their personal mental experiences—possessing them mentally, so to speak, through physically rendering the forms. (Long pause.) The art of drawing or painting to one extent or another always involves those two processes. An astute understanding of inner energy and outer energy is required, and for great art an intensification and magnification of both elements.