“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

All of your physical experience must, of course, be pivoted in the corporeal reality of the body. The energy that moves your image comes from the soul. Through your own thoughts you direct the body’s expression, and it can be of health or of illness. Out of a knowledge of the contents of your own conscious mind you can definitely heal most maladies of the body, within conditions to be given later.

(A one-minute pause at 9:21.) In normal daily life, considerable natural therapy often takes place in the dream state, even when nightmares of such frightening degree arise that the sleeper is shocked into awakening. The individual’s conscious mind is then forced to face the charged situation — but after the event, in retrospect. The nightmare itself can be like a shock treatment given by one portion of the self to another, in which cellular memory is touched off much as it might be in such an LSD session.

Nightmares in series are often inner-regulated shock therapy. They may frighten the conscious self considerably, but after all it comes awake in its normal world, shaken perhaps but secure in the framework of the day.

When large doses of chemicals are used, the conscious mind is confronted full blast with very potent experiences that it was not meant to handle, and by which it is purposely made to feel powerless. (Pause.) Faced with the exterior nightmares of wars and natural disasters, the conscious mind is still directed outward into that world with which it knows it was formed to cope. In periods of great physical stress it draws upon the powers of the body and inner self to perform remarkable feats of heroism — that leave it wondering afterward at the power and energy of the self in crisis.

Its own stability and awareness can be vastly deepened and strengthened. In times of seemingly calamitous encounters with nature, individuals may find themselves amazed at their capacity to relate with other people, but in the artificially induced psychic disaster area of massive LSD therapy, the situation is reversed. Consciousness finds itself in a crisis situation; not [because of one coming] from the exterior world, but because it is forced to fight on a battleground for which it was never designed and cannot understand, where basically counted-upon allies of association, memory and organization, and all the powers of the inner self, are suddenly turned into enemies.

For a moment he saw double worlds with his physical vision. While the experience was exhilarating, it could have turned into a “nightmare” had his conscious mind not clearly understood; had he walked outside, for example, and found himself encountering living creatures rising out of each rainy puddle; and if for the life of him he could not have turned the creatures back. As it was, it was a beneficial experience.

But when the conscious mind is forced to face far less pleasant encounters, and is robbed of its power to reason at the same time, then you do indeed insult the basis of its being.

He saw it physically, yet could find no physical cause for it. It lasted several seconds and disappeared. As soon as Ruburt saw it he leaped back. The last line in the poem he had completed just before dinner spoke of a light that would illuminate both worlds, one of the soul and one of the flesh. Consciously he thought the light must have been caused by lightning, even while he knew with another portion of himself that that was not the case.

A moment later the line from his poem came to him, and he made the proper connection. The conscious mind was disturbed for a moment but it assimilated the data. The meaning of the light will become even clearer through Ruburt’s dreams,³ the intuitive continuation of the poem, and physical example.

The meaning of the light will normally become unfolded as he is ready to fully perceive it. While the event has happened, therefore, like any event it is not completed. In the drug experience mentioned before (in the last session), startling, enforced symbols and occurrences are suddenly thrust upon the conscious mind; and more, within a context in which time as it knows it has little meaning. It [the conscious mind] cannot reflect upon phenomena subjectively. They happen too quickly.

Within their happening there may be a distorted — to it — grotesque duration in which action may be seemingly impossible. No separation between self and experience may be allowed. Even an exalted experience can be an assault upon consciousness if it is forced. The price paid is much too high as far as the entire personality is concerned.

The psychiatrist may say, “Go along entirely with the experience. If necessary become annihilated.” This flies directly in the face of your biological heritage, and the common sense of the conscious mind.

(Slowly at 10:54.) Change flexibly with the gracious dance of all being that is reflected in the universe of the body and mind. This does not include the crucifixion of the ego.

(Now here are excerpts from the account she wrote for me of her experiences involving the rain-puddle creature and the light on the evening of February 2. Jane’s narrative and poetry supplement Seth’s own words, and show how she became consciously aware of the unique transformation of her original poetic ideas into visual reality — and how she then carried the creative process another step by converting her new perceptions into more poetry. We think these bleed-throughs between realities are common, if largely automatic in most cases, in any area of “life.” In the arts they’re often called inspiration.

(“I’d been working all day,” Jane wrote, “on my book of poetry, Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time. Working like crazy, really on a creative ‘high.’ Just before supper time I’d been writing about the single yet double universe of self and soul, and the last line had quoted the mortal self:

of our single universe, and break

in my universe from yours?

(11:40) To some extent there is also an assault upon simple creaturehood. Its images and experience, furthermore, are seldom forgotten, and the so-called new ego is born with the memory of their imprint. Some psychologists like to say that you cry out unconsciously against the natural method of your birth.⁴ But here you have the situation where a self is faced with its own annihilation, while another “self” arises after conscious participation with its death.