“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(At first Jane and I thought of calling this session a deleted one—but its subject matter fits into Dreams too well for us to do that.

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.

This morning I tried to rough-in a small oil painting of myself standing before one of those walls of crystal color I’d seen in the dream. I had no trouble with the self-portrait, but still ended up quite frustrated. I’d anticipated the failure to some extent: With mere oil paint I just couldn’t match the iridescence of that dream wall of light and color. By session time I was caught. Should I junk the half-finished painting, or try to complete it? I could always make another attempt tomorrow morning, of course, but for some reason I was rebelling at admitting my failure today.

It is not just that such an inner universe is different from your own, but that any real or practical explanation of its reality would require the birth of an entirely new physics—and such a development would first of all necessitate the birth of an entirely new philosophy. The physics cannot come first, you see.

It is not [so much] that such developments are beyond man’s capacity as it is that they involve manipulations impossible to make for all practical purposes, from his present standpoint. He could theoretically move to a better vantage point in the twinkling of an eye, relatively speaking, but for now we must largely use analogies. Those analogies may lead you or Ruburt, or a few others, to a more advantageous vantage point, so that certain leaps become possible—but those leaps, you see, are not just leaps of intellect but of will and intuition alike, fused and focused.

Ruburt glimpsed some of the principles involved when you were at [your downtown apartments] on several occasions—once when he tried to write a poem about the comprehensions that simply would not be verbalized.² I do not know how to explain some of this, but in your terms there is (underlined) light within (underlined) darkness. Light has more manifestations than its physical version (intently), so that even when it may not be physically manifested there is light everywhere, and that light is the source of your physical version and its physical laws. In a manner of speaking, light itself forms darkness. Each unit of consciousness, whatever its degree, is, again, composed of energy—and that energy manifests itself with a kind of light that is not physically perceived: a light that is basically, now, far more intense than any physical variety, and a light from which all colors emerge.

The colors of which you are aware represent a very small portion of light’s entire spectrum, just physically speaking, but the spectrum you recognize represents only one inconceivably small portion of other fuller spectrums—spectrums that exist outside of physical laws.

Now: On certain occasions, sometimes near the point of death, but often simply in conscious states outside of the body, man is able to perceive that kind of light. In some out-of-body experiences Ruburt, for example, saw colors more dazzling than any physical ones, and you saw the same kind of colors in your dream. They are a part of your inner senses’ larger spectrum of perception, and in the dream state you were not relying upon your physical senses at all.

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.

Instead of the test, you are greeted with a vision of the shimmering glass with its glowing colors and prisms, rich and intricate, representing the true source of life and sexuality itself—the vast multidimensional mosaic of which sexuality is but one facet. You were viewing your representation of the many-faceted light of your own being.

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.

(9:26.) When I speak of an inner psychological universe, it is very difficult to explain what I mean. (Pause.) In that reality, however, psychological activity is not limited by any of the physical laws that you know. Thought, for example, has properties that you do not perceive—properties that not only affect matter, but that form their own greater patterns outside of your reality. These follow their own, say, laws of physics. You add on to, or build up your own reality, in other dimensions throughout your physical life.

That is as far as we can carry that for this evening. We need some new carriers for the concepts. But the light itself represents that inner universe, and the source of all comprehension.

1. I’ll report only the portions of the dream that relate to my perceptions of light and color, but will describe in full my waking experience of the next evening. Both accounts are revised from my dream notebook:

“My friend, Floyd Waterman (I’ll call him), and I were in a five-and-ten-cent store in Sayre, my old hometown. We were both dressed, but knew that we had to take some sort of tests for sexual potency. We stood near the large plate-glass windows at the front of the store—quite exposed for all to see, in other words, including those eating at nearby tables, yet no one seemed to be paying any attention to us…. Floyd had to take the test first, stepping into a little booth such as a cashier might use. As I waited to go next I turned to look out the front windows—and suddenly found myself surrounded on three sides by walls of the most beautiful floor-to-ceiling, intricate and colorful latticework of diamond-shaped glass crystals I could possibly imagine. I cannot describe the intrinsic shimmer and sparkle of those faceted walls, shining and vibrating in warm oranges, browns, yellows, reds, and violets. Each segment of each color was held within a very thin black frame, as on a much cruder scale the pieces of a stained-glass window can be contained by channeled lead strips. I can still ‘see’ those dream lights and colors as I write this account several hours later, after describing them to Jane. I’ve thought of trying to do a painting of my best dream images of all time … yet wonder how I can do it….”

“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.

“I’d been at once reminded of my dream of the night before, in which I’d seen many colors. But while these lights were ‘only’ white, they were both warm and cool, indescribable in their intensity, and really contained all colors.

2. We moved from our downtown apartments into the hill house almost five years ago (in March 1975), but Jane thinks she tried to write the poem Seth referred to several years before that. (She began speaking for Seth late in 1963.) I have no memory of her struggling with such a poem. I was most curious to see it so that I could quote a bit of it here. Jane has stacks of journals, poetry notebooks, manuscripts, and loose notes of all kinds, but neither of us could dig out what we wanted. Very frustrating! We hadn’t been as careful then about dating our work as we are now. “But I know I didn’t throw out whatever I did on that poem,” Jane said. One of us will probably find it someday—while looking for something else.

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.