“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Long pause.) Let us try another analogy: You are an artist in the throes of inspiration. There is before you a canvas, and you are working in all areas of it at once. In your terms each part of the canvas could be a time period — say, a given century. You are trying to keep some kind of overall balance and purpose in mind, so when you make one brushstroke in any particular portion of this canvas, all the relationships within the entire area can change. No brushstroke is ever really wiped out, however, in this mysterious canvas of our analogy, but remains, further altering all the relationships at its particular level.

These magical brushstrokes, however, are not simple representations on a flat surface, but alive, carrying within themselves all of the artist’s intent, but focused through the characteristics of each individual stroke.

If the artist paints a doorway, all of the sensed perspectives within it open, and add further dimensions of reality. Since this is our analogy, we can stretch it as far as we like — far further than any artist could stretch his canvas (leaning forward humorously). Therefore, there is no need to limit ourselves. The canvas itself can change size and shape as the artist works. The people in the artist’s painting are not simple representations either — to stare back at him with forever-fixed glassy eyes, or ostentatious smiles (again humorously), dressed in their best Sunday clothes. Instead, they can confront the artist and talk back. They can turn sideways in the painting and look at their companions, observe their environment, and even look out of the dimensions of the painting itself and question the artist.

Now the psyche in our analogy is both the painting and the artist, for the artist finds that all of the elements within the painting are portions of himself. More, as he looks about, our artist discovers that he is literally surrounded by other paintings that he is also producing. As he looks closer, he discovers that there is a still-greater masterpiece in which he appears as an artist creating the very same paintings that he begins to recognize.

Our artist then realizes that all of the people he painted are also painting their own pictures, and moving about in their own realities in a way that even he cannot perceive.

In a flash of insight it occurs to him that he also has been painted — that there is another artist behind him from whom his own creativity springs, and he also begins to look out of the frame.