“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

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.

This highly intricate web or field obviously reaches out from you as a self to all the persons you perceive, and you also participate in the same sort of web, projecting outward from the other individuals. These webs have an electromagnetic structure as well as a chemical basis. [...]

(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. (Long pause, then with humor:) It is very difficult for me to escape the sticky web of your beliefs. 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. [...]

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

[...] Consider a spider spinning a web. The web is a camouflage pattern that definitely exists on your plane. [...]

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. [...]

[...] I liked the analogy of the spider and his web because it is such a simple and uncomplicated example of camouflage construction, divorced from intermediaries such as ego or tools.

[...] 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. [...]

[...] I am no poet, but as in one of Ruburt’s poems, think of the brain as a web you form about the inner self. 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. [...]

[...] You weave webs of psychic reality that then coalesce into physical reality. [...]

[...] I am no poet but then thinking of one of Ruburt’s poems, then think of the brain, indeed, as a web you form about the inner self. A web works to help you manipulate in a world of space and time which is, indeed, as nebulous and as precarious, and as delicate, as any spider’s web, and hangs indeed in as precarious a balance. [...]

[...] You weave these webs of psychic reality that then coalesce into physical reality. [...]

[...] A spider, spinning its web, is using this sense in almost its purest form. [...]

[...] They are carriers of pictures and images, and expectations—the threads with which you form the sparkling web of physical life.

(To Ron.) And this applies even to you who feel that you have so many webs in front of your brain that you cannot possibly see through them, and of course you can, and the webs are there because you want to play with them at this time, and so feel free to do so. [...]

(To Ron.) And webs are beautiful things. [...]

As you sit reading this book in your present moment of time, you are positioned in the center of a cosmic web of probabilities that is affected by your slightest mental or emotional act.

(10:12.) To dwell upon the possibility of illness or disaster is equally poor policy, for you set up negative webs of probabilities that need not occur. [...]

[...] 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.

[...] What you are getting of him is a dim web work that is not substantial as yet. Give yourselves both time to build this web work before you decide to jump up and down upon it. [...]

[...] Remember our analogy of the spider and its web. The web exists both in time and space, as all physical constructions do. That is why I have said that your universe does not exist in the same fashion as the web, simply because it is not bound by space or time. [...]

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. [...]

(Slowly:) The dream state, however, does operate as a rich web of communication between probable selves and probable existences. [...]

(Another one-minute pause.) Give us a moment … The “unknown” reality sustains you and the web of life as you understand it. [...]

[...] 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.

[...] She said both her arms are working better, and that the web of skin between the thumb and the fingers, and between each finger, on her left hand, has softened considerably. [...]

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. [...]

As long as you believe that either good events or bad ones are meted out by a personified God as the reward or punishment for your actions, or on the other hand that events are largely meaningless, chaotic, subjective knots in the tangled web of an accidental Darwinian world, then you cannot consciously understand your own creativity, or play the role in the universe that you are capable of playing as individuals or as a species. [...]