“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

After supper Jane reread my accounts of my dream of last Saturday morning. February 9, and of my waking experience the next evening.¹ Both events had involved intense perceptions of color and/or light, and I’d told Jane that anything Seth cared to say about them would be most welcome. I’m especially intrigued by any similarities between my two adventures and the near-death experiences we’ve been reading about lately. In those NDE’s, as they’re called, people have often reported encounters with intense white light. I hadn’t been near death during my own experiences, certainly, but I do feel that through them I’d glimpsed ever so slightly that “light of the universe” that’s been so eagerly sought for—and sometimes reported—throughout history.

In that dream your worries were initially reflected—worries that your friend Floyd has also encountered on his own about virility and age,⁴ so you saw the two of you in a five-and-ten-cent store, simply representing the world of commerce, where items are sold: Did you still have a value in that world? Were you still virile? You were each to take your test. (Pause.) Others saw you but were unconcerned, showing that the concern was your own, but also expressing the feeling that the world might not really care.

Now: The lamplight episode. Here you did as you supposed. You viewed that inner light, but the lampshades had two purposes: one, as you surmised, to give you a comforting image, literally to shade your eyes. Ruburt was correct, however, in seeing the connection between the lampshades and the Nazi experiments (in World War II) with human skin. The movie (on television last night), about cloning and Nazi atrocities, had made you wonder about the nature of life once again, and man’s immortality. The connection with cloning came out in the lampshades made of (human) skins, in the old news stories—though your lampshades merely stood for those, and were of fabric. The connection was beneath, however, and also represented your feeling that even those people tortured to death did live again. They were not extinguished. Their consciousnesses were indeed like bulbs, say, turned on in new lamps. The lights connected life and death, then. The lights also represented pure knowing.

A note: I can add that I didn’t give up on my dream painting after all. The morning after this session was held I repainted that still-wet wall of colors I’d struggled with the day before. I managed to carry off the painting this time—merely giving impressions of the colors and foregoing their fantastic intensities and patterns. Next, I painted a small oil of the lights emitted by the two table lamps in my waking experience. The practice on the dream painting helped: This time I was able to hint more easily at the great combined radiance of those lights. However, I’ve learned that contending with the light of the universe can be a humbling task indeed….)

“Jane and I went to bed at about 1:15 A.M., after watching a movie on television. Subject: World War II. Jane lay quietly on my right, her back to me. As I rested face up in a very pleasant and peaceful state, waiting to enter the sleep state, I became aware of two extremely bright lights shining off to my right, beyond Jane’s form but within my peripheral vision. I knew, or saw, that these lights came from ordinary table lamps with columnar shades of white fabric, and that they sat on a round oak table like the one in our living room. The shade of the closest lamp was fatter and taller than its companion’s, but this didn’t seem to matter: I soon realized that both lights were supernally bright—so strong, indeed, that although I was very tempted to turn my head to look straight at them, I refrained because I wasn’t sure I could stand facing them. I understood that the lampshades were both comforting and protective, however, and I felt no fear, or even unease, at this adventure. I knew that I wasn’t dreaming, that the experience was most unusual. I also knew that by an act of will I could ‘swing’ the lights around in front of me if I wanted to, and I tried enough of this to verify that it was possible: As they moved the lights began to grow even more powerful—enough to quickly convince me that I didn’t want to confront their glare full blast, even with the shades.

4. It took me a while to realize that Seth had made a most interesting statement here—implying that somehow I’d picked up Floyd’s worries about his age and virility. Floyd, Jane, and I are good friends, and he’s well acquainted with our work. He’s a few years younger than I am (I’m 60), but as far as I can remember the two of us haven’t discussed such matters, even jokingly. Consciously. I enjoy and appreciate my age and virility each day without being concerned about them, yet my dream certainly revealed that on other levels I’m at least speculating about such issues. It’s easy to say those cares represent negative beliefs, but I think much more than that is involved—universal questions, actually, that all men and women have chosen to contend with in physical life.