“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.

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.

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.

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.

The inner senses, though I have in the past described them by separating their functions and characteristics, basically operate together in such a way that in your terms it would be highly difficult to separate one from the others. They function with a perfect spontaneous order, aware of all synchronicities. In that psychological universe, then, it is possible for entities “to be everywhere at once,” aware of everything at once. Your world is composed of such “entities”—the units of consciousness that form your body. The kinds of conscious minds that you have cannot hold that kind of information.

(9:44.) Give us a moment. … (A one-minute pause.) These units of consciousness, however, add themselves up to form psychological beings far greater in number than, say, the number of stars in [your] galaxy (over 400 billion of them), and each of those psychological formations has its own identity—its own soul if you prefer—its own purpose in the entire fabric of being.

You felt inferior to your own comprehension, for one thing. The colors were more brilliant than any physical ones, and so in a fashion you ended up trying a too-literal translation—too literal because a real translation would require colors and even symbols that you do not have on a physical basis. If you think of those colors as being inside you, even in your own cellular comprehension, then you will not be so careful. Do you follow me?

I told her that Seth’s idea of considering the colors in my dream as part of my cellular structure is an excellent one.

“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.

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.