“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Your private nature makes you wonder if that involves too much disclosure, particularly where family members are concerned. The connection with paintings brings about your desire that the photographs be “as perfect as possible.” You do not want anyone else to have a hand in your own work—that is in your paintings. To reproduce paintings, or in this case photographs, seems to be tampering with them in that regard. That is, if an editor changed your copy you would be annoyed, but reproduction, you fear, can change the copy of a photograph or a painting if it is not done properly. You consider photographs originals in that regard.

Now: you (to me) have been wondering whether or not to use family photographs in “Unknown” Reality. On the one hand you see how they fit into the book. Yet photographs are also connected in your mind with paintings to some degree. This is visual data, and as far as photographs are concerned personal data, out in the open, so to speak.

There is also a connection with your family’s photograph albums in general, and I have a suggestion to clearly give your father credit as photographer. Otherwise, regardless of what you say you thought, your mother would take my explanation as given.

(There was a short exchange between Seth and me, which I didn’t note down verbatim. He repeated that my mother would be against using photographs of her—something I’d never arrived at with the pendulum. When Seth asked if I had more questions, finally, I said no, that I’d have to think it over, and that perhaps we’d decide not to use photographs after all in “Unknown” Reality.

Now: Choose another photograph. [...] This should also be a photograph of yourself. [...] Look at it as you might look at a photograph of an animal in its environment. If the photograph shows you in a room, for example, then think of the room as a peculiar kind of environment, as natural as the woods. See your person’s picture in this way: How does it merge or stand apart from the other elements in the photograph? [...] If the photograph is dark, for example, and shows shadows, then in this exercise see those as belonging to the self in the picture.

Now: Take another photograph of yourself at a different age than the first one you chose. Ask yourself simply: “Am I looking at the same person?” How familiar or how strange is this second photograph? [...] What similarities are there that unite both photographs in your mind? What experiences did you have when each photograph was taken? [...]

[...] Simply to stretch your imagination: When you look at your photograph, imagine that you are a representative of a species, caught there in just that particular pose, and that the frame of the photograph represents, now, “a cage of time.” You, from the outside looking down at the photograph, are now outside of that cage of time in which your specimen was placed. [...] If you hold that feeling, then the element of time becomes as real as any of the other objects within the photograph. [...]

[...] The picture, the photograph, is but one small object in the entire range of your vision. You are not only outside yourself in the photograph, but now it represents only a small portion of your reality. Yet the photograph remains inviolate within its own framework; you cannot alter the position of one object within it. If you destroy the photograph itself, you can in no way destroy the reality that was behind it. [...]

It will help if now and then you imaginatively think of vivid dream imagery^l as if it appeared in a photograph instead. As during your lifetime you collect a series of photographs of yourself, taken in various times and places, so in the dreaming state you “collect” subjective photographs of a different kind. [...]

[...] It might be easier here, perhaps, if you compare a scene from a dream with a scene in a photograph. A photograph will show certain events natural to the time in which it was taken. [...]

[...] A photograph is taken, and you have before you then a picture of an event that in your terms has already happened. In dreams you take many subjective “photographs,” and decide which ones among them you want to materialize in time. [...]

(2. A photograph of Jane and her parents, Marie and Delmer. [...] I anticipated hearing what Seth would say about some of the probable paths since taken by the photograph’s three subjects. [...]

Another single photograph of a child; also a photograph of a woman who is now the wife of the man to whom these photographs and the object belong.

[...] Now I believe that this refers to four photographs. [...] Four people in this photograph, parents and two children.

An old-type photograph, and a connection with the year 1901. A connection with this photograph, and a two-or-three-story house, a frame house with brick or stone stairs at the front.

Another photograph of a nephew who was in college, or of college age, when the photograph was taken.

[...] Imagine a photograph of yourself (in parentheses: Yes, we are finally back to photographs).³ In your mind’s eye see the photograph of yourself on a table or desk. [...] If the photograph is strictly imaginary, then create an environment about the image of yourself.

[...] There is a knack about being a good dream photographer, and you must learn how to operate the camera. In physical life, for example, a photographer knows that many conditions affect the picture he takes. [...]

[...] Your world view is limited to the photograph itself. [...]

Dictation: Many of you do not really want to step out of the photograph, or leave your world view, yet in the dream state you are far freer. [...]

The children that I perceived, he projected into this picture of his, a photograph in which children were indeed involved. The photograph used in the test was taken in the afternoon. [...] I saw the chimney of the other house in the test photograph, but this does not show there.

(Jane told me that in the past she would have given her own interpretation of the photograph she had in mind along with Seth’s information. On one level she had a distinct impression of her own photograph. [...]

[...] For the test I used a color photograph of my brother Bill, his wife and two young children, taken in Webster, NY, in 1959. [...]

Ruburt has the impression of the school fence across the street from the house in which he lived, and he is thinking of a particular photograph of his own that involved his house, the street, part of the fence, and perhaps some children. [...]

Give us a moment … When you take a physical photograph you have to know how your camera works. [...] Sometimes shadows themselves make fascinating photographic studies. You might utilize them in the background, but as a photographer you would not confuse the shadows with, say, the solid objects. [...]

[...] The photographer in the dream world, though, will find an entirely different situation, for there consciousness can capture scenes from entirely different times as easily as the waking photographer can take pictures of different places. [...]

In waking life you experience certain events as real, and generally these are the only ones that can be captured by an ordinary photographer. [...]

When you awaken with a dream photograph in mind, it may appear meaningless because it does not seem to correlate with the official order of activities you recognize. [...]

If you can, find a photograph of yourself as a member of a class — a graduation picture, perhaps, or a photograph of club members. [...] Imagine the emotional reality of each person present, in the time that the photograph was taken. [...] Let your mind, after that, follow through by imagining contacts involving family interactions reaching back through time prior to the taking of the photograph. Then think of all of the probable actions that were either accepted or discarded, so that in time terms these people assembled (for the photograph).

(10:36.) Give us a moment … A photograph is to some extent a materialization of an idealization carried to a certain degree. [...]

[...] In greater terms, therefore, those people decided to be at that particular time and place, so that the photograph is the result of multitudinous decisions, and represents a focus of experience, rising from myriad probabilities. [...]

When my father, Robert Sr., photographed Jane and me on our wedding day, December 27, 1954, and then in 1957, did any of us know that his work would be published almost half a century later?

Jane’s father, Del, photographed her in 1951, when she was 22. [...]

Jane and I had been married for three months when my father photographed her in March 1955.

My friend, Laurel Lee Davies, photographed me in 1986, two years after Jane’s death.

[...] The photographs referred to are those sent to us a few days ago by John Eulenberg, from Michigan. He visited us a few weeks ago, in connection with Seth and linguistics, etc., and photographed us both in color.)

[...] There is a strong connection with a photograph, but I do not know whether the object itself is a photograph. [...] The object I believe came through the mail, whether or not it is a photograph.

[...] “A photograph, connected with Ruburt. [...] The geometric data recalled Jungle Gyms to her mind; these in turn reminded her of a photograph of herself, which she still has, that was taken of her at a playground in Saratoga Springs, NY, with a Jungle Gym in back of her.

[...] “These squares may be filled in; as buildings in a photograph would be picked up by me first as shapes, you see.” [...] Note that the photograph idea persists, once brought up through personal association.

[...] There is a strong connection with a photograph, but I do not know whether the object itself is a photograph. [...]

[...] The same applies to your feelings, until very lately, concerning your mother and the photographs. Here you had your feelings that photographs of the family would disclose a practical actuality far less than, for example, your mother’s ideal image of herself. You feared that in life she was always wounded by photographs because they showed her to be so far less than she wanted herself to be or appear.

When you let yourself go, your “natural” feelings lead you to fear that they will mutilate photographs, or in some way cheapen the book, dragging it down from the ideal. [...]

[...] Your challenge, then, if you believe in the photographs, is to send them out even if it means risking them, rather than refusing the expression of the ideal, which is always self-defeating. [...]

Prentice’s mutilation of the photographs is the same thing on your part. [...]

(To me, both photographs had a certain mysterious quality that I’d often found intriguing — an aura due partly to their being old, personal, and so irreplaceable, I suppose. [...] By now, did those photographs actually depict the immature images of us, the Jane and Rob we knew and had always been, or from our standpoint did they show a probable Jane, a probable Rob — two individuals who long ago had set out upon their own journeys through other realities? [...]

(Before the session I showed Jane a childhood photograph of herself, and one of me. [...]

(The photograph of me, taken and dated by my father [Robert Sr.], has been kept in one of the Butts family albums for 53 years. [...]

(The photograph of Jane is 33 years old. [...]

(Jane said that at the moment she had no idea why she clung to the photograph idea. [...] She now revealed that she had actually seen within three photographs, rather than the two mentioned. [...]

Ruburt’s own perceptions are somewhat confused here because he thinks of two photographs. [...]

We will try and say that a photograph is involved, that it is a fairly dark one, that Ruburt is in it, perhaps also a dog. [...]

There is a man connected with the photograph. [...]

[...] If the object is not a photograph, it is closely connected. I have the impression of a black and white photograph.

(“No more than I have said. If the object is not a photograph, it is closely connected. I have the impression of a black and white photograph.” [...]

(“Do you think the object is a photograph?”)

(As soon as she opened the double envelopes, Jane said the object looked like a man to her, with either horizontal edge uppermost, and that she thought this impression had given rise to the photograph data. [...]

True identity is as much divorced from ego reality as the photograph is from the person. There are connections between an individual and his photograph, and there are connections between the physical individual and the inner self, but the person must recognize the image in the photograph, for it will not recognize him.

The physical universe is like a very poor photograph. As the pictures and representations in a photograph are only dim, incomplete symbols for the people and objects they represent, so the physical universe is but a dim image of the reality for which it stands.

(Jane said she saw a photographic “size and shape” while she was speaking, but the visual data weren’t clear here. [...]

[...] picture in terms of a photograph connection.” [...] Here Seth connects the picture with photograph. [...]

[...] Picture in terms of a photograph connection.

[...] A distant connection—distant, now, with the year 1947, with the photograph of the woman. [...]

[...] Jane received a photograph of him in the mail the other day.

[...] I comment now and then about photographs that belong to the Butts family [including Jane Roberts], yet any reader can look at old photographs and ask the same questions, applying what is said here to private experience. [...]

[...] Jane Roberts’s husband, Robert Butts, wondered about the death of his mother (on November 19, 1973). In a session (the 679th for February 4, 1974) he brought out some old photographs. [...]

[...] A photograph. Ruburt here thinks of the photographs taken in your studio, of him.

(“A photograph. Ruburt here thinks of the photographs taken in your studio, of him.” [...]

The photograph connection is strong (pause) but I do not believe the item is this precisely. [...]

There seems to be a dual impression of printed matter with a photograph. [...]

Ruburt here thinks of a photograph of the two of you, taken at Marathon. [...]

A photograph, and a connection with someone who visited here.

[...] I remember the photograph of Jane and me taken at Marathon, Florida. [...]

[...] Jane’s father is of course “someone who visited here,” but we do not know what “A photograph” means, particularly, in the test data, since Seth did not elaborate.