“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Tension is infinite. Your time system is indeed the result of tension as it is distorted within your own system, yet the distortion itself, as you see, creates a new reality. And that reality then continues to operate, forming like realities of the sort that can exist within the given conditions already set up by the original distortion.

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.

The reality then tries to recreate itself in identical fashion, fails, and is again distorted into a further facet of basic reality. This holds true under all circumstances and under all conditions. Recall here the material concerning identities in general.

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.

The painting that results is a new reality, but it is also a distortion of the original landscape. The artist may hint at time within his painting, but he cannot capture the physical eons that might be contained in the mountains themselves, which he wishes to reproduce.

The painting, therefore, is both a distortion of reality, and the creation of a new reality. Likewise all realities are formed.

Mankind is to some intimate degree acquainted with this attempt of action to recreate itself, for human reproduction is here a case in point, each individual attempting to create a replica, the attempt doomed to failure, but the attempt itself resulting in a distortion of the original action; that is, a distortion of the original individuals, and in the creation of a new reality, this process then being repeated indefinitely.

The distortions are then creative. The nature of action itself is such that tension is one of its positive characteristics, and the tension is the element that causes action to seek expansion in terms of an attempt to duplicate itself.

We come therefore to the fact of creative tension. The individual in his psychological state is familiar with creative tension, often in its pure state. So quickly however is the tension transformed into a distortive creation that the sensation of creation is mistakenly accepted as the tension itself, rather than seen for what it is. Creation is the result of tension, though instantly new tension is set up, since tension is a characteristic of action. And each creation, being action, will instantly set up new tension.

Creative distortion, in its relationship with action, affects therefore the creation of thoughts. The principle of creative distortions is mainly responsible for the fact that no identical thought is ever transmitted from one individual to another. Here the material that I have given you on telepathy should be considered.

The thought received in telepathic communications will not, therefore, be the exact thought that was transmitted, but a close approximation, a creative distortion, actually created by the receiver. There are, as I mentioned, no duplication of identities.

The creative dilemma, the creative distortion, is of course itself an action that is resolved in further acts. These are basic principles concerning the nature of action, principles that are carried through within any system. They are valid therefore within your own system, within the electrical system, within the dream system, and among all others.