“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Distortion, in this respect, has a different meaning than the sort of distortion arising from a misreading of information. Yet in some respects it is similar. An original action can never repeat itself in an identical fashion. Its attempts to do so, never successful, result in a kind of distortion, and this distortion then becomes the basis for a new reality.

Such a landscape would have to be composed of the actual elements that compose the original landscape. The artist would have to assemble mountains of rocks, an infinity, that is infinity of molecules, all equally impossible. The best he can do is create a distortion of the original landscape—a creation of an approximation that can comfortably exist within the limited perspectives with which he can work, and using the materials that are at his own command.

However his painting contains new realities, and distinctive ones, that would be alien to the original landscape. The actual trees, had he really been able to reproduce them, would then undergo their seasonal changes. The trees in his painting, being artificial reproductions, do not undergo the same physical changes, even while the atoms and molecules that compose the canvas itself, and all the pigments, constantly themselves change.

(Break at 10:07. Jane was well dissociated. She had spoken at a faster rate. She also said that as she spoke she had received the feeling of a concept from Seth. It was difficult for her to put into words. It had something to do with her perception of two identical masses of landscape, one being meant to duplicate the other. At the same time, she said, the duplicating mass would have to displace another equal mass to make room for the duplication.

In a like manner for example, the act of dreaming itself changes both the dreamer and the dream. The act of doing anything at all automatically changes the doer. The reality of any action automatically determines that the action will change.

I may use the word future, but I use it only to express that which is beyond my present perceptive limits. It is almost impossible to speak of a single, simple action, though I may do so for convenience’s sake.