“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

There are many variations, in fact, that would be better than your present system. Ideally, sleeping five hours at a time, you gain the maximum benefit, and anything else over this time is not nearly as helpful. Those who require more sleep would then take, say, a two-hour nap. For others a four-hour block sleep session and two naps would be highly beneficial. With suggestion properly given, the body can recuperate in half the time now given to sleep. In any case it is much more bracing and efficient to have the physical body active rather than inactive for, say, eight to ten hours.

Two periods of three hours apiece would be quite sufficient for most people, if the proper suggestions were given before sleep — suggestions that would insure the body’s complete recuperation. In many cases ten hours sleep, for example, is actually disadvantageous, resulting in a sluggishness both of mind and body. In this case the spirit has simply been away from the body for too long a time, resulting in a loss of muscular flexibility.

You have trained your consciousness to follow certain patterns that are not necessarily natural for it, and these patterns increase the sense of alienation between the waking and dreaming self. To some extent you drug the body with suggestion, so that it believes it must sleep away a certain amount of hours in one block. Animals sleep when they are tired, and awaken in a much more natural fashion.

You separate them as much as possible. In doing so you divide your intuitive, creative, and psychic abilities quite neatly from your physical, manipulative, objective abilities. It makes no difference how many hours of sleep you think you need. You would be much better off sleeping in several shorter periods, and you would actually then require less time. The largest sleep unit should be at night. But again, the efficiency of sleep is lessened and disadvantages set in after six to eight hours of physical inactivity.

When the physical self sleeps the astral image may indeed wander. [...] Its telepathic and clairvoyant abilities are not hampered in any way by the ego when that self sleeps. In waking hours the communications system is more or less closed on the ego’s side, but in sleep the barriers are lifted and knowledge from the inner self has a freer flow.

Incidentally, suggestion will reach many aspects of the self, and some which are very distant from the ego, for you are setting into motion psychic action, which is behind all realities. Suggestion will reach portions of the self of which the ego is entirely unfamiliar. Suggestion can indeed change experience which has already passed.

The inner senses will also react to suggestion. If you therefore suggest that you become more aware of their activities, then so you shall. You are giving suggestions, whether or not you realize it, constantly. [...]

First however I have a suggestion for Ruburt along the following lines. He is now at the point where he can greatly improve the condition of his eyes, and his vision, through consistent self-suggestion. [...]

(Seth proceeded to suggest several things Peggy might do; if she followed the suggestions the trouble should disappear. She should give herself suggestions before sleep that she not sleep on her left side, but her right side instead. [...] Peggy said she didn’t think she slept on her left side; Seth said she did after going to sleep, and that suggestion would prevent this. [...]

[...] I told him the lighting was flattering, but Bill insisted there was a different quality in the work, and that he did not believe it was due solely to suggestion.

[...] In the last few days the discomfort has moved down into her left arm; periodically she said the arm tingles, in a sensation similar to that felt when a limb has gone to sleep. [...]

[...] He told her to use suggestion that her circulation in the afflicted areas be more than adequate until the condition subsided; she should do this frequently during the day. [...]

[...] Suggestions would be given that the individual involved would experience, say, aggressiveness, within a dream. It would also be suggested to him that he learn to understand his aggressions by watching himself while he was dreaming [watching the dream as he would a play]. If I may indulge in a fantasy, theoretically you could imagine a massive experiment in dream therapy where wars were fought by sleeping, not waking, nations.”

[...] But Seth suggests the following exercise as a dream therapy: before sleep, suggest to yourself that you will have a pleasant or joyful dream that will completely restore your good spirits and vitality. [...]

[...] On Seth’s suggestion, I told myself before sleep that I would have a dream that would give me further information about my own reincarnational past. [...] Then I gave myself the suggestion several times and fell asleep.

[...] If you’re really furious at someone and don’t dare retaliate, then you can give yourself the suggestion before sleep that in a dream, you’ll really get even. [...]

Suggest that instead of falling asleep, you will come into another kind of wakefulness. Try to imagine that you are awake when you sleep. [...]

I will suggest many exercises throughout this book. [...] I may ask you to forget physical stimuli, or suggest that you amplify them, but I am nowhere stating that your mode of consciousness is wrong. [...]

Some night as you fall to sleep, try telling yourself that you will pretend you are awake while you sleep.

[...] I am going to suggest, then, some simple exercises that will allow you to directly experience the “feel of your being” in a different way.