“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

It will automatically be evocative of other objects not in the painting, and will automatically remind the viewer of the universe that you did not paint. Expansiveness is built in psychically in this manner.

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.

The meaning behind them was known to all. Each of the great masters’ paintings somehow suggest the existence of far greater realities, of which the paintings were a part. They saw the objects within their paintings as portions of a greater whole that was suggested by the painting.

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.

An apple can do more in a painting than stand before the spirit of all apples, though that is an accomplishment. An apple can imply, through use of the exercise I have given you, the whole unseen universe, though not another object is shown in the painting itself.

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.

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.