“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The web is a work of art, the spider’s home, and the source of his food as well. Although it may seem to your consciousness that one spider web is like any other, this is not true, of course, in the world of spiders. All creatures of whatever degree have their own appreciation of esthetics. They possess the capacity to enjoy esthetic behavior.

Many such creatures merge their arts so perfectly into their lives that it is impossible to separate the two: The bee’s nest, for example, the beaver’s dam—and there are endless other examples. This is not “blind instinctive behavior” at all, but the result of well-ordered spontaneous artistry. It is foolish to say that the spider’s web is less a work of art because the web can be formed in no other way by a spider, since for one thing the differences in the individual webs are not obvious to you, only to the spiders.

In a sense, painting is man’s natural attempt to create an original but coherent, mental yet physical interpretation of his own reality—and by extension to create a new version of reality for his species. It is as natural for man to paint as for the spider to spin his web. The spider has its own kind of confidence, however, and a different organization in which he operates. The spider does not wonder “Is my web as beautiful as my neighbor’s, as meaningful? Is it the best web I can construct?” He certainly does not sit brooding and webless as he contemplates the errors he might make.

Now: The spider spins his web, and the spider’s web is a combination of art, craft, esthetics, and utility.

there is no spider or bug that is untruth

and the spider trusts its own reality

how can I not be as daring as that spider

when the spider does

[...] A spider, spinning its web, is using this sense in almost its purest form. The spider has no intellect or ego, and its activities are pure spontaneous uses of the Inner Senses, unhampered and uncamouflaged to a great extent. But inherent in the spider, as in man, is the complete comprehension of the universe as a whole.”

(Pause.) You say little, for example, if you note that spiders make webs instinctively because spiders must eat insects, and that the best web-maker will be the fittest kind of spider to survive. [...] The web, however, in its way represents an actualized ideal on the spider’s part — and if you will forgive the term, an artistic one as well. (Louder:) It amazes the spiders that flies so kindly fall into those webs. You might say that the spider wonders that art can be so practical.

[...] This applies to a spider in a closet as well as to any man or woman. [...]

[...] Is it then so enamored of the spider’s web that it loses all sense of caution? [...]

[...] In a way impossible to explain, the fly and the spider are connected, and aware of the connection. [...]

You construct your own camouflage existence as the spider constructs his web, but you are not aware of the threads. You do not understand that they originate within yourself, although it is very simple to smile as the lowly spider weaves its web. The spider’s construction is severely limited to one plane, but this is not the case with your constructions, which may have reality on many planes at once, and in ways with which you are not familiar.

[...] Consider a spider spinning a web. [...] Here your simple spider is using his sixth sense, for these senses are the latent property of other living things, and not restricted to mankind.

What you have in the spider’s activity amounts to a demonstration of the sixth inner sense almost in its pure form. The spider has no intellect or outer ego, and his manipulations are the direct result of activities performed by pure and spontaneous use of the inner senses. [...]

Inherent, and I repeat inherent in the spider as in man, is the complete comprehension, or rather comprehension through direct experience, of the universe as a whole. In its particular existence the spider is not aware of all this knowledge, but it uses what is necessary of it to construct its web. [...]

[...] With decorations that seem spider shaped.

You have never seen what design is until you see a spider’s web when you are out of the body. You have never seen what design is until you see a spider’s web from the spider’s viewpoint. [...] You can use your psychic abilities, to throw your consciousness into the spider. [...]

[...] Scientists like to say that animals operate through simple instinctive behavior, without will or volition: It is no accomplishment for a spider to make its web, a beaver its dam, a bird its nest, because according to such reasoning, such creatures cannot perform otherwise. The spider must spin his web. [...]

(Slowly at 10:03:) Each part is vital, and in one way or another there is instant communication between the smallest and the largest, the cobweb and the spider, the man, the entity, and the star — and each spins its own web of probabilities from which other universes continually spring.

The beaver is not free to make a spider web. [...]

[...] Many such creatures merge their arts so perfectly into their lives that it is impossible to separate the two: the spider’s web, for example, or the beaver’s dam—and there are endless other examples. [...]

[...] She said she didn’t want to mislead me, but that the traps reminded her of spider webs, the way the insects became trapped in them.

[...] A church, this is separate, with decorations that seem spider shaped. [...]

(Also, I saw a big black spider on woman’s dress, over one breast. The spider was fat. [...]

[...] I do not mean an attempt to find out why you are frightened of spiders or have boils on your arm. [...]

[...] I do not mean an attempt to find out why you are frightened of spiders or have boils on your arm. [...]

[...] Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly. [...]

[...] This webwork helps you manipulate in a world of space and time, and is as nebulous, precarious and delicate as any spider’s web — and in as precarious a balance. [...]

[...] He is also within each spider, shadow, and frog, and this is what man does not like to admit.

[...] A chart made of all the events to date would show an interlocking pattern of lines, I believe, like a spider’s web. [...]

[...] An example being the spider’s web, and the table of a past discussion which is actually a conglomeration of atoms and molecules, loosely held together but experienced by your outer senses as a solid camouflage structure which can be used and manipulated in your camouflage existence.