“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

WHERE YOU AND THE WORLD MEET

THE LIVING PICTURE OF THE WORLD

Now for dictation. The first chapter is entitled: “The Living Picture of the World.”

The living picture of the world grows within the mind. The world as it appears to you is like a three-dimensional painting in which each individual takes a hand. Each color, each line that appears within it has first been painted within a mind, and only then does it materialize without.

In this case, however, the artists themselves are a portion of the painting, and appear within it. There is no effect in the exterior world that does not spring from an inner source. There is no motion that does not first occur within the mind.

The great creativity of consciousness is your heritage. It does not belong to mankind alone, however. Each living being possesses it, and the living world consists of a spontaneous cooperation that exists between the smallest and the highest, the greatest and the lowly, between the atoms and the molecules and the conscious, reasoning mind.

All manner of insects, birds and beasts cooperate in this venture, producing the natural environment. This is as normal and inevitable as the fact that your breath causes a mist to form on glass if you breathe upon it. All consciousness creates the world, rising out of feeling-tone. It is a natural product of what your consciousness is. Feelings and emotions emerge into reality in certain specific ways. Thoughts appear, growing on the bed already laid. The seasons spring up, formed by ancient feeling-tones, having deep and abiding rhythms. They are the result, again, of innate creative aspects that are a portion of all life.

The inner world of each man and woman is connected with the inner world of the earth. The spirit becomes flesh. Part of each individual’s soul, then, is intimately connected with what we will call the world’s soul, or the soul of the earth.

You always know what you are doing, even when you do not realize it. Your eye knows it sees, though it cannot see itself except through the use of reflection. In the same way the world as you see it is a reflection of what you are, a reflection not in glass but in three-dimensional reality. You project your thoughts, feelings, and expectations outward, then you perceive them as the outside reality. When it seems to you that others are observing you, you are observing yourself from the standpoint of your own projections.