“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.

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.

Now: Topic: The light.

The light of your questions (pause) is, in its way (underlined), an apport from that other inner universe. In your world light has certain properties and limits. It is physically perceived by the eyes, and to a far lesser degree by the skin itself. In your world light comes from the sun. It has been an exterior source, and in your world light and dark certainly appear to be opposites.

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.

(Pause at 9:06.) So-called empty spaces, either in your living room between objects, or the seemingly empty spaces between stars, are physical representations—or misrepresentations—for all of space is filled with the units of consciousness, alive with a light from which the very fires of life are lit.

The physical senses have to screen out such perceptions. That light, however, is literally everywhere at once, and it is a “knowing light,” as Ruburt’s [William] James perceived.³

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.

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.

(Long pause.) The paintings that you have envisioned, for example, exist there, and they are every bit as real as the paintings in your studio. I am not speaking symbolically here. There is indeed light that you do not see, sound that you do not hear, sensation that you do not feel. All of these belong to the realm of the inner senses. The inner senses represent your true powers of perception. They represent, say, your native nonphysical perceptive “equipment.” The physical senses are relatively easy to distinguish: You know what you see from what you hear. If you close your eyes, you do not see.

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.

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….)

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.