“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You cannot step outside it for a better view. (Humorously.) It is easier to realize that the vision and the everalive energy is far more permanent than the forms. The permanency and the timeless quality do not belong to the shapes of the mountains and the trees, but to the conscious energy that forms them.

You as artist, symbolically speaking, should not step backward to see the landscape more clearly, but step into it so that you can feel it more clearly. If you sense the peculiar and overall gestalt that is beneath the form at any given time, then creation of the form will follow naturally and truly.

The form is caused by a characteristic condition of the energy at any given time. If you are intuitively aware of that miraculous neatness, if you allow yourself to be enveloped within that particular moment point, then the painting will form itself about you in somewhat the same manner that I am formed about Ruburt’s voice. But your painting of course will be more visible.

You should in any case whenever possible sketch outdoors, for you are personally renewed by such an encounter, And the implications are very different. When you are outdoors sketching there is before you a large expanse. It is easier to think in terms of size and expansion. Thoughts of expansion will help your work, so that the energy and vision are not imprisoned by form but are within form, even while in the process of change.

When you are sketching outdoors, as a helpful exercise I suggest the following: attach your focus of attention to one small thing. It may be a flower or a stone. Something however that catches your own eye. Imagine the energy within that object perpetual, but in terms of being endlessly alive and vital.

(I am not an expert on Spanish art, but the above passage reminds me of Velazquez for some reason. Nor does Jane know Spanish art. For instance, she doesn’t particularly admire Spanish artists, or talk of any one or group of such artists, etc.)

Now the energy can be best suggested by transparents, rather than opaques, for the opaques are too ponderous. The opaques can be used effectively to suggest the form, superimposed lightly over the transparent energy, but never with a heavy hand.

(This is sound painting technique. Jane paints in her own manner, quite different than mine, but the above data is not her way of thinking in painting terms as far as I know. I have never heard her mention this, at least.)

Now. One of the attractions for others in that painting of me is that it automatically suggests an unseen audience, to whom I appear to be speaking. Not indeed a formal audience, but unseen listeners who represent humanity at large. The unseen is there. ‘The figure manages to suggest the universe of men and the world that holds them, yet nowhere literally do these appear.

(Another long pause. I asked finally: “Why don’t you open your eyes?” But Jane did not do so, and gestured to me to wait. Resume at 10:11.)

—but this is what you have been searching for in that regard.

(Again Jane paused, at 10:13. This time she told me I had better speak her name three times, as Seth had suggested I do in a recent session, when her trance was deep. I did so now, and very slowly Jane opened her eyes, one at a time, on a crack. But, as she said later, she never really got out of the trance, and resumed at 10:15.)

This has something to do with Ruburt’s difficulty in breaking the trance state. (Pause.) From someone else here… Your figures, to get the feeling of depth and breadth, this is not to get the feeling simply of the flesh and bone within the flesh, but to suggest the personal energy and vitality that is in a riot, to be loose within the flesh.

(I asked the question because of the long pause; I wanted to keep Seth on this track, and thought he might begin talking about another subject. Jane said she had visions of brown earth and clumps of grass while she gave the data. A little earlier, she now added, she had seen flashes of other paintings as she spoke about the old masters, but she didn’t know which paintings were involved by name.

(The Van Elder name was not specifically familiar to me, although it could be said to have a familiar sound. I can say that the painting and energy data given tonight is entirely sound and worthy, however, and certainly beneficial for any artist. The method of using siennas, ochre and violet is not one I have used, but appears to be quite sensible; I may try it soon. I do not believe Jane consciously thinks this way.