“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Jane and I think that the psychological effects of the accident at TMI are at least as important as the physical ones—and that eventually they will be much more so around the world. To my way of thinking, the consciousness connected with TMI is of an unknown quantity and quality.¹

Six weeks ago in Tehran, the capital city of Iran, over 150 officials of the ruling Islamic Republican Party were killed by bomb explosions which destroyed their headquarters building. At first revolutionary zealots blamed the “Great Satan”—America—for the crime. They also accused Iraq, with whom Iran is at war, but it’s almost certain that one of the dozen or more Iranian underground revolutionary groups is responsible. [The most powerful one, the Mujahedin-e Khalq, for example, is a Marxist-based guerrilla organization of “People’s Crusaders” that espouses its own brand of radical Islamic republicanism.] The mass killing resulted in an immediate increase in the government’s campaign to eliminate opponents of clerical [Shiite] rule in Iran. Over 70 dissidents had already been executed by the time of the blasts; many others have been arrested since.

In all of this—the bombings and persecutions and killings—I thought of great, loose groups of consciousnesses swirling in angry revolt, with each consciousness “working” individually and collectively for and against others, each one seeking to know new creative aspects of itself within the framework of a chosen national structure.²

As I have frequently mentioned, you have a hand in forming all events to one extent or another, and at certain levels you are therefore involved in the construction of those global events that affect the world, whether they be of so-called natural or cultural nature.

Yet (remembering what I said about seeming contradictions), your dreams are also social events of a kind, and the state of dreaming can almost be thought of as an inner public forum in which each man and woman has his or her say, and in which each opinion, however unpopular, is taken into consideration. If you want to call any one dream event a private event, then I would have to tell you that that private event actually was your personal contribution to a larger multisided dream event, many-layered, so that one level might deal with the interests of a group to which you belong—say your family, [or] your political or religious organization—reaching “outward” to the realm of national government and world affairs. (Pause.) As your private conscious life is lived in a community setting of one kind or another as a rule, so do your dreams take place in the same context, so that as you dream for yourself, to some extent you also dream for your own family, for your community, and for the world.

Group dreaming was at one time taken for granted as a natural human characteristic—in a tribe, for example, when new locations were being sought, perhaps in time of drought. The various tribal members would have dreams in which the problem was considered, each dreamer tackling whatever aspect of the problem that best suited his or her abilities and personal intents. The dreamers would travel out-of-body in various directions to see the extent of drought conditions, and to ascertain the best direction for the tribe to take in any needed migration.

(Pause at 8:43.) Their dreams would then be shared by the tribe in the morning, or at special meetings, when each dreamer would give a rendition of the dream or dreams that seemed to be involved. In the same way, other dreamers would simply check with the dreamers of other villages or tribes—perhaps a hundred or even more miles distant. Some such dreams were extremely direct, others were clothed in symbolism according to the style of the dreamer, but in any case the dream was understood to have a public significance as well as a private one.

Psychologists often speak of the needs of man. Here I would like to speak instead of the pleasures of man, for one of the distinguishing characteristics of value fulfillment is its pleasurable effect. It is not so much that man or nature seeks to satisfy needs, but to exuberantly, rambunctiously seek pleasure—and through following its pleasure each organism finds and satisfies its needs as well. Far more is involved in the experience of life, however, than the satisfaction of bare needs, for life is everywhere possessed with a desire toward quality—a quality that acknowledges the affirming characteristics of pleasure itself.

(Long pause at 9:00.) One of the main purposes of dreaming, therefore, is to increase man’s pleasure, which means to increase the quality of living itself. Dreams are mental work and play combined, psychic and emotional rich creative dramas. They also involve you in the most productive of enterprises as you begin to play with versions of events that are being considered for physical actualization, as on a personal level you “view” the probable events which your family, tribe, organization, community and country will actualize.

“All That Is creates its reality as it goes along. Each world has its own impetus, yet all are ultimately connected. The true dimensions of a divine creativity would be unendurable for any one consciousness of whatever import, and so that splendor is infinitely dimensionalized (most intensely throughout), worlds spiraling outward with each ‘moment’ of a cosmic breath; with the separation of worlds a necessity; and with individual and mass comprehension always growing at such a rate that All That Is multiplies itself at microseconds, building both pasts and futures and other time scales you do not recognize. Each is a reality in itself, with its own potentials, and with no individual consciousness, however minute, ever lost.”)

Most of our tapes are dated—but not the one containing the session I’m quoting from below. I estimate that Seth gave this information to a group of visitors who attended a class some time in 1974 (or seven years ago):