Session 603

[SESSION 603]

[JANUARY 10, 1972 9:10 PM MONDAY]

(The first portion of this session, the 603rd, is deleted from the record. Begin at 9:10 PM)

Now, good evening.

(Good evening, Seth.)

And some personal material first.

Now. Up to a certain point compromise can be a beneficial reaction.

Beyond that point it can turn against you. The compromise of your job therefore was beneficial to a point. Ruburt feared that the point had been reached beyond which you could not afford to go, while still maintaining those ideas, ideals and goals that were your own.

It was known at your place of employment. An unconscious bargain had been made by you and your employers. They knew precisely how much you would work for, and to what ends you would work. They also knew that you did not want more money---this is precisely what you did not want. More money simply would have made the temptation stronger. You made your attitude quite clear. You did not want advancement, and you did not want more money.

So you cannot blame them for not offering a temptation that you did not want to begin with.

(I don't. This hasn't really been a point with me, although at times I would get mad at Artistic for at least not offering me something more.

At the same time I told myself the low pay prevented me from ever deciding to make a career of it there, and let it go at that.)

Ruburt has learned to make compromises, not always gracefully, but he has learned that they are sometimes important. He is against them on rinciple however, and very straightforward in his approach. He saw your life adding up to a circle of compromises -- compromises that would cost you your vitality, both of you, in the end.

In some (underlined) respects he was right about compromises, and some made in the past out of well-meaning ignorance cannot easily be changed. These concern your family.

Too many compromises do sap your strength and energy, and the work compromise was inhibiting your painting to some extent. The focus upon compromise automatically forces you to withhold directness and energy in all of your pursuits. After a while despite yourself you take on to some extent the coloration and attitudes of others who live by compromise entirely, until your own clear-cut ideas and purposes seem more and more un realistic.

(An excellent point.)

This is the fear that Ruburt felt for you. Now. Your own ideas and goals are worthy ones, and yours for a reason. They have within them the power to develop and mature. It was known, then, that you would leave before you gave notice, unconsciously perceived.

There is some envy. You did not say that you intended to devote yourself to your own painting, and this should be verbalized. The family compromises began long ago, out of a misguided sense of sympathy, and now to some extent or another will continue. Here you are caught in a compromise of emotions. Ruburt feels this particularly strongly, because he is so sensitive over such relationships to begin with. The situation however is such that almost any clear emotion is automatically denied expression, shunted aside and often replaced completely by an opposite---all under the guise of the idea of (in quotes) "being good and understanding."

(Again, excellent material.)

Unconsciously the emotions are quite clearly picked up on all of your arts, and clear communication, bodily or verbally, almost completely cut off. The quite legitimate spontaneous desires to be of help are therefore often hidden beneath a barrage of resentments at being forced to help for the wrong reasons.

Help given resentfully is little help. It does not help the giver or the receiver to any strong degree, and may in fact harm both. Help given spontaneously out of love is the only kind of real help to giver or receiver, and yet this important kind of help is often denied expression because of the inner resentments.

Your mother realizes when she is pulling emotional blackmail on you, and recognizes when you come, willingly or unwillingly. The situation's roots lie so in the past, and so pervade the present, that practically little can be changed without the greatest efforts. She knows you come out of obligation. That is like a slap in the face that she must tolerate, and because of her own actions and stress laid upon what was right and proper at the expense of true feelings.

Your mother is quite shrewd however, and has grown these years. In the ast she would have been quite able to face and handle everyone's honesty, and honesty would have been far kinder. So the true love and compassion goes crying, while you are forced to express an exterior love and compassion many times.

All of this is quite legitimate, and that is undistorted.

Now apart from that, Ruburt has his own feelings, which are somewhat exaggerated, but he also usually tries to disregard them emotionally. He says "I overreact to Rob's mother," and intellectually then says "that is silly," but he never allows himself to experience the feelings themselves. He does not want to hurt you. He does not want things to be unpleasant.

Yesterday he allowed some of these feelings to arise only because he was so miserable. (While we were in Sayre; Jane was doing the washing; mother was cooking dinner, etc.) He remembered you and the endulum, and having none there instead allowed submerged feelings up.

You should know what they were. (Jane told me about some of them at the time; which I thought an advancement.) He was scandalized and outraged. Sundays were the days he could not escape his mother. There was no school, no excuses to get out. It was a day of encounters with her---her two-hour bath, the preparation of meals, and the wild hope that he could escape after supper for a few hours.

Fifteen years of that at one end of the scale, he thought, and ten or fifteen in the middle with your mother on Sundays. His loyalty as you know is binding. If he thought she had been a great mother to you then your Jane's feelings would not be so strong.

Ruburt felt "Here was another ranter and raver, another tyrant in skirts, taking my free day of the week." Now. He felt better physically when he realized the feelings at that point, and when even through a reproachful silence he expressed them. When they returned he felt them again. Then they vanished again.

[(I would say that all of this marks definite learning on Jane's part.

If she will just keep it up....)]

Allowed their mobility, feelings are beneficial. They replace each other, they ebb and flow. (Louder, humorously, reaching forward to ta me on the foot:) Now do you want any more personal material?

(A half-laugh: "Who knows?")

Then I suggest your break.

He would not though, you see, express those feelings to you.

(9:45. True, Jane didn't express those feelings to me in those terms, but she let me know she was quite upset, etc. Resume at 9:52.)

As I told you, you chose your families. You gave yourselves as adults situations with your families, mainly with yours, in which you had to relate on an entirely different level and in a different kind of role.

You have no children. The family relationship therefore served and serves to give you a kind of contact, an enforced education, as it were, so that you can understand what goes on within such relationships.

Understanding your own reactions helps you understand the reactions of others. Otherwise you would find other people's reactions far too alien, and not be able to relate to them personally or through your work. This applies to both of you.

(I have suspected this at times.)

Ruburt is progressing. The exercises (yoga) are good, in case you wondered. His willingness to physically exert himself is important here. The physical effort involved. The body is awakening, in those terms. The sleeping requirements were a result of the sudden use of hysical energy. He should find the requirements quite lessened this week, and that should be followed by a noticeable easy release of hysical energy during the normal day.

Now give us a moment. I would like you to have several Sumari sessions together. You can arrange this any way you like---in the place of one regular session, for example.

I of course will also be present, and perhaps vocally as well.

(Humorously.) But there are some interchanges that I would like you to become aware of, that can be done in practice. Then I would like to explain them to you. Do you follow me?

(Yes.)

Your own discussions, and the improvement in your relationship as I told you, in one way is responsible for your latest developments in our sessions, and I include the Sumari---the songs, and the statement.

(That I wrote to Jane on December 31, 1971. Jane is still deciphering this.)

Other developments have been mentioned. I expect that you will play some strong part here on your own, if you want to; this having to do with the reception of Sumari art. (I am more than willing, etc.)

The art and the symbols are closely related, and I do not mean by this that the art is necessarily stylized, as for example the symbols necessarily were. But none of this could have been done, or begun, without clearing the debris that had gathered about you both, emotionally and practically. If you go ahead with the work you are meant to do, it will also take care of you.

Now. I am going to end our session. Ruburt is concerned because you are tired.

("I'm okay." I'd been expecting this.)

(Smile, emphatically:) I am not concerned, because I know the energy available to you, but I do have his concern to deal with.

(Can I ask a question?)

You may indeed.

("For the last couple of years I've been wondering about my strong interest in the painting of Rembrandt van Rijn. When I was a young man in New York City I even saw some of it in the museums, but I don't recall being that affected by it then. I might vaguely recall some of it, but that's all."]

(I didn't add that I was well aware of the time sequence here---that according to Seth I had a rather long life in Denmark in the 1600 's ---and that Rembrandt lived in Holland from 1606 to 1669.)

Now. There are several reasons.

You connect me with Rembrandt's period. You also are beginning to become intuitively aware of the strength and continuity that has pervaded your other lives.

You were very close to Rembrandt at one time---you looked up to him.

(Pause.) I almost have a name. Pinot (spelled).)

There are several things you do not understand. I have not explained them. (Pause.) It could be Pinet (spelled).) Also add a date: 1660. Now. There are a series of steps of stone, leading to a large building. Inside sculptors are working. Leo (my phonetic interpretation) is not there. There is a man vastly interested in the idea of coloring sculptures---the statues.

The pigment however is hard to prepare. The sculptors do not trust him.

Some of the ingredients come from the hillsides---scooped earth. Some from herbs. The colors must be prepared differently than for frescos.

[("Is this in Italy?" I didn't know whether to interrupt or not.

Seth/Jane had a little trouble with the word frescos, as though it was unfamiliar to her. She knows the word, however.)]

Florence. (In Italy.) The master wants to get the same feeling of bulk and three-dimensional weight and size from flat ainting---molding color rather than rock. They think it cannot be done.

He is fascinated by the concept.

(Rembrandt copiously achieved this effect in his later works, especially the last ten years or so of his life. I don't believe Jane knew this in those terms. I am well aware of it, and want to use effects similar to this in my own work, and have done so at times in past works.

I haven't discussed it with Jane, though, just considering it a technical problem involved in the art, as I would suppose she would work at writing a paragraph, etc.)

[(There is no record that Rembrandt ever traveled more than fifty miles from Amsterdam, Holland. Very little is known about his life.)

Out of his desire he applies energy (gestures) and color over it, so that the paintings have then the reality he hopes for.

(By master, you mean Rembrandt?)

I do. He travels and learns. He also learns some secrets of color through the man mentioned earlier, and there is a binding agent in his work not recognized as such. A chemical technique learned.

(Rembrandt's technique has been the subject of much speculation over the centuries. Especially when he took to piling pigment up to a thickness of a quarter of an inch in such paintings as "The Jewish Bride"---a masterwork. It is thought he used stand oil---heat-treated linseed oil---and varnish of various kinds as a medium. If he added anything else to his pigments it would be well worth learning about.)

I will see what else I can get. Take a break or end the session as you refer.

(What did you mean when you said I was very close to Rembrandt?)

You were indeed. You were the man who experimented with color, as applied however to sculpts. And one of your discoveries was of the binding agent adopted by the master painter in his work.

You were also close friends. You came from a different country, where the weathering effect upon statues was different. (Denmark? I hated to interrupt with a lot of questions. I thought we could fill in details in later sessions.) This is a long subject however. There was difficulty with varnishes, sometimes drying before the color upon which they were applied. Also varnishes that did not dry evenly, but with accumulations of oils resulting. On frescos this was disastrous enough.

(All of this is very acute artistic information, and embodies the use of good technique even today. Again, I don't believe Jane knows these things consciously. The varnish data is very good, also the fresco material. Many frescos were ruined in those days through poor techniques. Quality control was not what it is today re paints, varnishes, etc.)

Attempts to paint sculpts however that were often for outdoor use sometimes resulted not only in running together color, but in a mold that built up between layers of color.

(I know little about efforts to paint sculpts, but the above sounds very possible, re the mold.)

Too much oil facilitated the growth of certain molds. Lead white often stopped the growth of the mold, but it was too harsh a color. The lead content stopped the mold.

(Lead white, for centuries, has been the recommended white pigment for oils, and indeed before this century was the only white available, as far as I know. It is poisonous. Even today most authorities still regard it as having superior properties to all other white pigments. In this life, however, I prefer zinc white.)

You learned how to mix colors in such a way that they would dry uniformly, and to apply them in certain ways (with gestures, implying layers of color one over the other) to facilitate this drying.

(I am still much interested in the technical side of painting, so much so that a few years ago I drew back from getting too involved in this aspect lest I spend too much time at it, detracting from the painting itself. I still conduct experiments, though.)

[(I also work, usually, with one color layer over another, rather than mixing them while wet. This maintains purity and clarity of color---and has been considered sound painting technique over the years.)

There was a varnish, finally, that you mixed in with some of the igments after they were prepared, with the dry pigments after they were repared, that served as a binding agent that also protected each color from the other one. There was a slight lead content mixed into the varnish.

(In those days, tubes for paints did not exist---all color had to be repared fresh each day by the artist or assistants, from dry pigment.

Varnish was often used as an ingredient in mediums. There are and were, many kinds of varnish. A slight lead content in a varnish sounds quite ossible.)

Rembrandt took the discovery with him, though you initially developed it for sculpture that stood outside. I am not at all sure here. Write down the word caronide (spelled) . It is connected.

(I know little about chemistry. There is a lead carbonate, for instance.)

You also experimented with inserting odors into pigment, very briefly, for churches, so that a violet for example would smell like the flower.

You would mix ground rose petals into the red pigment to be used for a ainting of roses.

Now take your break or end the session.

("We'll take the break.")

(10:38. This proved to be the end of the session. I wanted to learn more, but we were both bleary. Jane's pace had been average with this material.)

[(Any such experiments with adding odors to paint would fail, I believe.

Even today, as far as I know, this hasn't been accomplished.]

(The Rembrandt data is surprising, and raises many questions. According to Seth I lived in Denmark in the 1600's. I was a painter as a younger man, then gave it up for the more respectable role of a farmer, at which I was quite successful. I do not know whether I traveled to Italy, or at what point in my life age-wise. Perhaps I was there before giving u active painting. I believe I farmed in Denmark, but there is much here that we don't know. Denmark and Holland of course are close geographically.)

(There is little available on Rembrandt's correspondence---a few letters; inventories attached to his bankruptcy in later life, etc.

Italy is not mentioned as far as I know. Rembrandt did do business with a wealthy art collector in Sicily, selling him some very famous works---Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer, etc., and a series of etchings late in life. Don Ruffo. Historians generally say, for want of any other facts, that these business transactions were done by mail, etc.)

(Perhaps I carried out some of my experiments with painting the outdoor sculpture in Denmark, where winter weather must be considered, after visiting Italy. While I discussed the Florence, Italy, data with Jane after the session, Seth returned very briefly re Rembrandt:)

That is why he went to Florence---to see the sculpture there. [Perhaps after my return to Denmark from Italy I did some experimenting re ainting sculptures, and then passed this information on to Rembrandt?]

(A note added 31 years later, while I prepare this Volume 2 of) The Personal Sessions [for publication. As gifts for me because of my interest in their great creativity, Jane "tuned into", on her own and without Seth, excellent books on the artist Paul Cézanne in 1977 and on the philosopher William James in 1978. Both works have been ublished.]

(Several years later Jane gave me another gift---a book on the artist Rembrandt van Rijn. This hasn't been published---but will be in the later volumes of) The Personal Sessions. [I'll explain the circumstances of her producing] Rembrandt [when presenting the first passages of the book.)