“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

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.

In a portrait, do the same exercise as given earlier. Imagine the individual as the center of all life, so that when the painting is completed it automatically suggests the whole universe of which the individual is part. Nothing exists in isolation, and this is the secret that the old masters knew so well.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?