“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now. Sketching freely outdoors will allow you freedom that will be beneficial.

Now in other ways it was also utilized by your old masters. The expansiveness then was also of a spiritual nature. Whatever objects were shown in the painting automatically presupposed the existence of spiritual realities, and other universes, though these presuppositions were highly ritualistic.

Now the suggestion I have given you is the same sort of thing. There is no dependence upon agreed ritualistic symbol, however. The exercise itself will allow you to make the necessary transformation, where the one becomes all. Now this is the expansion of which I am speaking. It will cause immediate physical evocative reactions. Do you follow me here?

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.

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.

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.

Now one other small point. (Pause.)

(Jane sat in her rocker facing the living room wall upon which hung my oil portrait of Seth. She pointed to it now.)

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.

(Now Jane, as Seth, pointed to an acrylic seascape that I had recently hung on the wall opposite Seth’s portrait. This I painted last year. After the seascape Seth inspected an oil of a tree that I had painted in 1960; this hung beyond the seascape, toward the front door.)

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.

(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.)

Now, some of my suggestions for you this evening come from better sources than I. For as you know I am no artist.

Having to do with him. (Pause, head down, hair disheveled.) Now as the clouds’ construction constantly changes—tonight you watched them (and sketched them after supper) so the forms of objects constantly change. (Pause, head down, hair disheveled. Eyes closed. Jane constantly rubbed her face and eyes with both hands.) We had better get Ruburt out of this for now, at least for a break. Touch his shoulder.

(My first question about Van Elder shook her up a little, she said. The Van came through clearly. Jane had the impression at the time of Seth conferring with someone else, she said. The next word, she now speculated, could have been either Elder or Older; Jane said now that she didn’t realize this until she voiced the idea.

(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.