“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

It is easier then to sense and feel the alive energy within and beneath the physical forms that you see. It is easier to feel yourself as the artist, also a part of the landscape that you paint; to sense the merging of your own energy into the scene before you, and to realize that you are a part of it also. For you paint reality from within.

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.

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.

Pretend that the energy within that object is the center of life, so that the whole rest of the universe derives its energy within that stone or flower. Do this until you can feel that energy pulsate within the form of the object, so that the form itself is ever mobile while it retains the semblance, as in a stone, of immobility.

Think of the energy as radiating outward from the object, giving life to all other things, whether or not many specific objects are to be in any given painting. This will result in paintings in which your chosen point of attention radiates through the form, illuminating all other objects in the painting, and psychically radiating outward from the painting.

The timeless quality will be built in, for the painting itself, though flawless in form, will suggest the changing quality of form, and stress the permanent quality that gives it its meaning. If you as artist are also aware that the same energy that fills the form that you paint also forms your own image, then the transformation into something better than excellent art is made.

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.

A good use of transparents in oils will make you more pleased with using them. Movement can be best portrayed also with transparents, and even for rocks. While opaques may be used to suggest physical heaviness, transparents should be used also to show that in actuality rocks are as light as air, and to hint at the ever-mobile energy that forms them.

Now again, much of this has to do with your own interest. Opaques are excellent to suggest a heavy or dark mood. In portraits, while the inner skeletal structure must be hinted at, and while the figure should be well done, still there should be the suggestion of the personality going beyond the image, and of the personality’s energy radiating outward.

In the smallest detail of the smallest still life they managed to suggest the reality of the spiritual universe, of which that detail was a part, and through which the energy of the universe spoke.

Painting or sketching outdoors for a while will aid you considerably in your ability to sense this inner unity, to see each natural object in its individualistic momentary majesty, and yet to realize that it is in one way a center through which all energy moves.

In itself an object should be then felt as its unique identity, and as a part of the whole universe. A stone or a flower is a very small thing. When you attach your attention say to a flower, it is not only a matter of imagining yourself as the flower, or trying to sense what a flower is. It is also to imagine the power of the energy that causes that flower to grow; and yet in a landscape you will have perhaps many flowers. They must each suggest the reality of the overall pulsating vitality that makes their appearance possible.

Now oils themselves suggest the earth. The medium is a fairly natural one. Let the medium then stand for and represent the physical appearance of permanency in any object, the physical continuity of any given human form in a painting. Let transparents represent the constant renewal of energy that always escapes the form. These lift the medium itself into another realm, and the two together can suit your purposes well.

The seascape automatically suggests the energy that moves the ocean. Now, the tree does not suggest the energy that forms trees. It does not suggest the universe. The tree does not for others suggest more than you have literally put into the painting.

Ruburt cannot deal with form you see, in painting. He does not understand form in those terms, and never has. You can use it beautifully, as the carrier through which energy flows, and at the same time remember that the form itself is also the energy, period.

Energy fills out the sails of form. The energy is psychic and spiritual. It will endure as long as there are people to look at paintings. If you can suggest this, and you can, Joseph, then you will truly fulfill your artistic abilities. To some extent you have been trapped by the object, trying so hard to identify with it that this kind of expansion was not possible.

The skin of the apple must also give the feeling that it is more than an enclosure, for through it energy from the sun also comes. While it seems solid it is open, and connected with the rest of the universe. An apple in a room goes out into that room. Do you see?

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.

(At 10:22 I did so, and spoke to Jane again. Very slowly her eyes opened; they were very heavy and sleepy and the effort involved was apparent. I said it was the end of the session. When she finally began to talk Jane said this was the deepest trance, the “farthest out” she had ever been, bar no other time. Yet she still remembered some of what she had said, in a general way. She felt Seth had come through as specifically as possible for her at this time, and with great clearness. Jane felt the energy involved: “I had a sense of tremendous power going through me.”

(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.