“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(That statement, in fact, plus her desire for material from Seth on a question of her own, made her wonder whether we’d even receive any book dictation tonight. Then, no sooner had we sat for the session than Jane asked me to write down what she was about to say, since she had the material available whether or not Seth got to it: “A new part, or chapter heading: ‘People Who Are Afraid of Themselves. Controlled Environments, and Positive and Negative Mass Behavior.’” I told her I thought Seth would not only have plenty of time to cover our respective questions, but would come through with some book work too, and this was the case.

Your painting was meant to bring out from the recesses of your being the accumulation of your knowledge in the form of images — not of people you might meet now on the street, but portraits of the residents of the mind. The residents of the mind are very real. In a certain fashion, they are your parents more than your parents were, and when you express their realities, they are also expressing yours. All time is simultaneous. Only the illusion of time on each of your parts keeps you from greeting each other. To some extent, when you paint such portraits you are forming psychic bridges between yourself and those other selves: Your own identity as yourself grows.

(9:29.) Give us a moment… By all means encourage the dream activity, and there will be a correspondence between your dreams, your painting and your writing.² Each one encourages the others. Your writing gains vitality from your painting, your painting from your writing — and the dreaming self at one time or another is in contact with all other Aspects — capital “A” — of your reality.

When people are convinced that the self is untrustworthy, for whatever reasons, or that the universe is not safe, then instead of luxuriating in the use of their abilities, exploring the physical and mental environments, they begin to pull in their realities — to contract their abilities, to overcontrol their environments. They become frightened people — and frightened people do not want freedom, mental or physical. They want shelter, a definite set of rules. They want to be told what is good and bad. They lean toward compulsive behavior patterns. They seek out leaders — political, scientific (humorously), or religious — who will order their lives for them.

In the next portion of this book we will discuss people who are frightened of themselves, then, and the roles that they seek in private and social behavior. To some extent we will be discussing closed environments, whether mental or physical, in which questioning becomes taboo and dangerous. Such environments may be private, as in the case of persons with what are generally called mental disorders, or they may be shared by many, in — for example — mass paranoia.

1. In Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality Seth began developing his theory of counterparts — that the larger psychological self, or entity, of each of us manifests not just one physical life in any given century, say, but several, so as to gain that much more experience in a variety of roles involving different ages, nationalities and languages, sexual orientations, family roles, and so forth. As I understand the counterparts thesis, the individual may or may not meet at least some of his or her counterparts, scattered as they can be among earth’s different countries and cultures. Jane and I have encountered a few of our respective counterparts, however, principally through her now-defunct ESP class.

2. Seth mentioned a “correspondence” among my dreams, painting, and writing because just lately I’ve been doing small oil paintings of a few of my more vivid dream images. I’ve discovered that this is great fun — and much more challenging than I’d anticipated, as I try to reduce the shifting, brilliant dream elements to the motionless painted surfaces we’re so used to in waking reality. Each little painting becomes a unique adventure both technically and emotionally, and I hardly succeed in solving every attempt I make. Now, futilely, I wonder why I didn’t try painting images from my dreams at a much earlier age; and why one so seldom hears about other artists doing the same thing. I don’t personally know any other artist working with dreams this way.