“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Give us a moment … When you take a physical photograph you have to know how your camera works. You must learn how to focus, how to emphasize those particular qualities you want to record, and how to cut out distracting influences. You know the difference between shadows, for example, and solid objects. 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. No one would deny that shadows are real, however.

Now, using an analogy only, let me explain that your thoughts and feelings also give off shadows (intently) that we will here call hallucinations.² They are quite valid. They have as strong a part to play in dream reality as shadows do in the physical world. They are beautiful in themselves. They add to the entire picture. A shadow of a tree cools the ground. It affects the environment. So hallucinations alter the environment, but in a different way and at another level of reality. In the dream world hallucinations are like conscious shadows. They are not passive, nor is their shape dependent upon their origin. They have their own abilities.

Since these are far more lively than ordinary shadows, and are definitely more colorful, they may be more difficult to distinguish at first. You must remember that you are wandering through a mental or psychic landscape. You can stand before the shadow of a friend in the afternoon, in waking reality, and snap your fingers all you want to, but your friend’s shadow will not move one whit. It will certainly not disappear because you tell it to. In the dream world, however, any hallucination will vanish immediately as soon as you recognize it as such, and tell it to go away. It was cast originally by your own thought or feeling, and when you withdraw that source, then its “shadow” is automatically gone.

Physically, an oak tree may cast a rich deep shadow upon the ground. It will move, faithfully mirroring the tiniest motion of the smallest leaf, but its freedom to move will be dictated by the motion of the oak. Not one oak leaf shadow will move unless its counterpart does.

[...] Some men, maybe police, come in and we hide in the shadows; a door beside is going to open so we get down and drag ourselves on our bellies to another door at the end of the room to hide in the shadows. [...] As we move toward door shadows, almost same, I see one woman carrying Rob’s landscape (the one in our bedroom) pushing it ahead of her. [...]

[...] I have an impression of afternoon, an impression of three people, of dirt or dirt color, and shadows or shadow shapes, perhaps of pyramid form.

[...] This led him to think of his old home, for in the afternoon the shadow of its roof threw a pyramid shadow form upon the road.

(During last break we had speculated about the photograph being taken in the afternoon, because of the elongated shadows on the white snow. [...] It seems reasonable to agree with Seth; I do not believe such shadows can be found in the morning during the winter months.

(The photo is of a winter scene, with brilliant contrasts of light and shadow. [...]

[...] Now to others that you do not perceive, you are as magical, you are as nebulous as a shadow falling upon a floor in midafternoon. [...] And as they may not see your magic and your consciousness, so there are other magic shadows and other realities that you think beneath you that you do not perceive. But All That Is is aware of each shadow. And knows that each shadow... [...]

[...] In your spontaneity then, never forget the sacred uniqueness of a shadow upon a road, the shape of a leaf, the stain upon a coffee cup—in these simple things find a hint of your own uniqueness and travel beyond them—and ignore conscious restraint that would bind you. [...]

[...] I saw her head turned down in the mirror; I also saw a shadow suffuse the mirror image. At the same time, I had the feeling that the face, now somehow animal-like in the shadows, hung forward of the body, that it had somehow detached itself from the shoulders. [...]

(Since the hand was in shadow to begin with, there was no mistaking the change.

[...] See the color change, see the shadows in the palm disappear? [...]

[...] The glow suffused the palm, eliminating the shadows normally to be seen there, so that it did not seem the fingers were merely folded over.

About hidden landscapes, suns and shadows,

Throw leaping shadows on the arm.

and shadows that leap

[...] Since the hand was in shadow, there was no mistaking the change.

[...] ‘See the color change and the shadows in the palm disappear? [...]

[...] The glow suffused the palm, eliminating the shadows normally to be seen there, so that it did not seem that the fingers were merely folded over.

[...] The white crept up Jane’s arm to the sweater, and bled down her fingers, until all semblance of shadow was gone from the arm and palm. [...]

[...] Gold colored, and partially in shadow. [...] Shadows play a prominent role in it also. [...]

[...] Dark colors and light colors and shadows.” [...] “Dark colors and light colors and shadows” can refer to either a photo or a painting; the description is quite apt for the painting roughly indicated on page 39.

[...] Gold colored, and partially in shadow. [...]

[...] Dark colors and light colors and shadows. [...]

Its shadow fell wrinkled

You are seeing shadows upon a blank and a black screen. The three-dimensional system is like a shadow of realities that you do not perceive. [...]

[...] That the power beneath the voice is but a shadow of the vitality that is within each of you. [...]

[...] Your camouflage patterns can be likened to those cast by sun and shadow upon the ever-moving waves. [...]

[...] Such affairs are only the shadows of probabilities—that is, experienced merely as shadows, and not fleshed out, because of your own better attitudes and knowledge. [...]

[...] In this particular painting the background will play an important role, since it is designed to indicate a play of light and shadow. [...]

Between those extremes of terror and intense joy however, where the intensity itself can almost form the same sort of grimace, there are infinite varieties of emotions, these being reflected in every minute shadow and gesture.

[...] Her chair was against a wall, and out of the direct line of reflected traffic lights, although I could see shadows pass across the white blur of her face. [...]

[...] Light and dark, with shadow shapes. [...]

(We do not see a connection with “Light and dark, with shadow shapes” particularly. [...]

[...] The motion seemed to be all exterior, from the too-warm wind that blew into my small studio from the back hill, to the shadows of moving foliage outside that flickered across the floor.

[...] Or rather, I felt an inner psychological motion happening — a movement as definite, yet subtle as the shadows that flickered on the floor. [...]

(In the same average voice she began: “In the shadow of the image organized religion [at the same time my hands want to fly up], after it has been set up, has always been afraid of revelationary knowledge; to protect itself; and the Catholic Church in particular cast it in the form of a devil, which I was taught: the sin of pride, wanting to learn.”

[...] Religion tried to make the devil into a black shadow of God, His counterpoint and yet opposite, but man forgot what counterpoint meant. [...]

The wind on the arm blows the hair,
And at the base, a golden mole,
Such a speck as a peach might have,
But the hair arches back to show a gaping hole,
And each ounce of flesh is a fence,
Erected roundly and snug
About hidden landscapes, suns, and shadows,
Inroads laced with prickly shrubs.
Peer through. The holes are not big enough to see much,
But dreams travel wondrous wires.
Fires brighter than autumn moons
Throw leaping shadows on the arm.
Days and nights burn like stars
In the twinkling meadows of the skull,
And through the fence of peach-blooming flesh,
Other fruits blossom, beyond reach.