“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Practically speaking, this is seldom done, but it has been on occasion. The brain cannot contain such episodes. A portion of the self would retain these experiences. Now in a creative individual, some of these could be expressed symbolically in a painting or other work of art, but the ego could not consider them as actual.

Now, each brush stroke of a painting represents concentrated experience, and compressed perceptions. In a good painting these almost explode when perceived by the lively consciousness of another. The observer is washed over by intensities. Again, experience that has nothing to do with physical time. The same can be said for a successful poem, though here I speak of Ruburt’s knowledge of poetry, rather than of any of my own.

The excellent work of art recreates for the observer inner experience of his own also, of which he has perhaps never been aware. As you know, paintings have motion, yet the painting itself does not move. This idea perhaps will help you to understand experience in terms of intensity, and projections, or the movement of consciousness, without necessarily any involvement with space.

True motion has absolutely nothing to do with space. The only real motion is that of the traveling consciousness. (Long pause, eyes closed; one minute.) Spatially, a painting is flat. Its reality leaps out from its physical dimensions, and completely escapes them. (Long pause.) The depths within the painting do not physically exist, yet they are perceived.

Your physical time is something like this. There is a strong connection here I have been trying to get through, but it is for now too difficult for Ruburt to catch. All of the experience an artist has gained is in any given painting, not physically perceived, but strongly perceived by the inner senses.

This is coded, shielded, even from his own ego. Each painting that is successful forces the consciousness to travel into it, in ways that I will more thoroughly explain.

The spacious present is always present (smile)—my pun—in any work of art. As you should know, there is a difference in the type of mobility of an objective painting, and an abstract one. The fluidity or the spacious present pervades the dream state as it pervades a painting, but the images are projected into the spacious present by the dreamer, according to his own understanding and experience.

(Jane said Seth had been trying to get through concepts that were difficult. She had an image of spirals, for instance, all interlocked without being regular, that concerned the material on paintings and time, but she couldn’t get it clearly nor even describe it adequately. There were images within this concept that were something like an accordion, Jane said, having to do with time opening and closing, etc.