“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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

In your terms, there is a great pleasure to be found in both work and play, in excitement and calm, in exertion and rest (long pause), yet the word “pleasure” itself has often fallen into disrepute, and is frowned at by the virtuous.

(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.

2. Sometimes together, sometimes separately, Jane and I listen to portions of the tapes students had made of the sessions and other exciting happenings in her ESP classes. I’d hardly put into shape for Session 933 my musings about the workings of consciousness than I heard Seth come through with these two passages; at once they reminded me of what I’d just been writing about.

“Violence will always be used creatively. You cannot be destructive even when you try. Beyond that, however, in the meantime the violence that you do, you do to yourself. You are a part of All That Is—of all the nature that you know and experience, of the world that you know, and even a part of the world that you know that you do not like. If you rip off the wing of a fly, you are yourself less. If you purposefully, now, or with malice, step upon an ant, then to the extent of your malice you step upon yourself all unknowing. Violence will always be used creatively, but if you do not understand this—and at your present rate of development you do not—then any violence is violence against yourself. This applies to each of you, for when you think in terms of violence you think in terms of malice or aggression. Despite all man does, he cannot really work any destruction—but while he believes in destruction, then to that extent he minimizes what he is, and must work harder to use creativity.”

“Thus far, however, the old habits have returned, and for all of your joint good intents the idea of bringing things to a crisis point is still far less beneficial than it might appear. This does not mean such a method cannot work at times. It does mean that on the whole it is a difficult method, and in utmost honesty and clarity in that regard, I can only tell you what I have said before: Regardless of how ill-founded it may seem on certain occasions, basically speaking the situation becomes less as you pare it down in your mind, rid it of significance in your mind, say things like: ‘Well, after all it is not that bad yet,’ or in other ways turn your attention otherwise.

End at 9:25 P.M. The “crisis point” Seth referred to revolved around the continuous efforts Jane and I had been making to help her; see the opening notes for the session. I hadn’t realized she was concerned that I thought she should let her work go on Dreams and concentrate instead upon our private material, but I was quickly able to convince her that I didn’t feel that way.)