“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(My pendulum related the symptoms to my decision to paint an oil from a small pen-and-ink sketch I had made in 1969. I pulled the little sketch, which was a free interpretation of what I considered to be a man facing himself, embodying certain distortions of face and form from my files recently and decided to paint it. For a surface I chose a cardboard canvas-covered panel made by one of the well-known artist’s manufacturers. I don’t often use such panels, usually thinking them not permanent enough; I almost always prefer Masonite, etc.

(To bolster the permanency of the panel I backed it with a wooden frame that I glued to the panel, to prevent warping, etc. I used wood for this that I found in father’s garage in Sayre over the last weekend. On Tuesday afternoon when I began the blowup of the drawing to transfer in turn to the panel for painting, the symptoms began—coughing, sneezing, etc., much like aggravated hay fever symptoms. I also had trouble figuring out the right size to make the figures in the oil—nothing was going right, and after a while it was only too obvious that my subconscious was raising hell about the whole project.

(I felt much better while out working Wednesday morning, but the symptoms returned again Wednesday afternoon when I again tackled the project in the studio. I became angry and half disgusted, and began to realize that I would probably have to abandon the painting, since I wasn’t resolving the problems. I was afraid that once the symptoms persisted for another day or so, I would have a cold or some such thing to handle, and that days could be spent clearing it up. I didn’t ask Seth to clear anything. I was also struck by my reaction to the whole development, and couldn’t help comparing my reaction to Jane’s reaction to her own symptoms. I wanted out after a day of unease, but her symptoms had persisted now for several years. I felt intuitively that both sets of symptoms represented doing things that encountered resistance; my own symptoms seemed very instructive in this respect.

You did not encounter the difficulty in sketch form, you see—only when the idea of permanency in a painting came into issue. The remark I made about the inner encounter will help you reconcile the two positions.

(“I thought this painting would allow me more of an expression of fantasy than I usually permit myself.”)

You can accept completely abstract work, and do it well, though you would not be satisfied with it for a great time. (True.) This sort of a painting however, that uses figures or objects, but not in representational form, bothers you, while you are strongly attracted in sketches of the same nature. There is no dilemma: you allow the intuitive self spontaneous expression in those sketches. It is only when you transpose the same ideas onto painting and a more permanent form that you become uneasy.

Give us a moment here. (Pause.) You trust the extrerior sense of order you perceive in objects, and when they are distorted this brings a sense of alarm—again, in paintings, not sketches.

Intuitively you knew better, and (but?) when painting was concerned—your career, you did not allow yourself the freedom. In sketches which were fun, and to you not permanent, you permitted the spontaneity.

Your father always tried to fix objects that were broken. To some extent you carried this with you, so that objects or figures not painted correctly, in those terms, should be fixed. The order seemed broken.

There will be no problem however as you become aware of these connections. You looked for great order, to create in painting an ordered universe, to find perfection that ideally you felt should be in the exterior world, and yet was lacking. You discovered that order itself springs from spontaneity, and this is your first real attempt to bring the two together. Do you have any questions?

(Nevertheless, I have laid the projected painting aside, at least for the time being, although I did arrive at what seems to be an acceptable solution to all portions of my personality. At least the pendulum agrees to this. But it is Sunday, May 16, as I write this, and the symptoms are still with me—to a much lesser degree. They are gradually wearing away, in the same way, I suppose, that I will gradually come to reconcile the conflicts I became aware of through this whole episode.

(In the meantime, I told myself I would know how to proceed with painting; the result is that I returned to a small portrait I began several months ago, and left unfinished while I tackled some other problems. With this decision I feel I am back on a kind of track that will lead to more developments; some of these developments may possibly include the kind of painting that triggered the episode; if so, if compatible, all to the good. Whatever happens, much was learned and will be put to use.

(I am finishing up a series of half a dozen life-sized portraits, at the end of which, I told myself some time ago, I would feel free to embark upon larger projects of whatever choice I made. The smaller painting mentioned above is part of this series; so in returning to this I think I made a good decision. The pendulum agrees.

(In earlier deleted material, Seth told us that Jane’s slower physical motions since the publication of The Seth Material was, in part, caused by her desire to slow down to give me a chance to catch up to her own success, etc., through my painting.)