“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Some of this has to do with distorted ideas of both the conscious and unconscious minds, using your terms now. Generally speaking, in Western society the conscious mind is seen as coming into its own in early adulthood, as the self rises from the bed of childhood unconsciousness into its critical awareness and differentiation. The appreciation of distinctions and differences is considered one of the greatest characteristics of consciousness, and so those aspects of it are valued. On the other hand the equally significant assimilating, combining, correlating characteristics of consciousness are overlooked. In scholarly circles, and many that are not scholarly at all, the intellect is equated only with the critical faculties, so that the more diagnostic you are the more intellectual you are considered.

During Western years of adulthood, consciousness is focused most intently in one specific area of activity and physical manipulation. From childhood, the mind is trained to use its argumentative, separating qualities above all others. Creativity is allowed to flow only through certain highly limited, accepted channels.

When an individual becomes older — and retired, for example — the focus for that particular kind of concentration is no longer so immediately available. The mind actually becomes more itself, freer to use more of its abilities, allowed to stray from restricted areas, to assimilate, acknowledge and create.

Now: You equate the color white with brilliant consciousness, good, and youth, and the color black with the unconscious, old age and death.

Applied to old age, the color black denotes a returning to those unconscious forces. Now all of this so far is from the standpoint of American and Western belief. It is simply the reality in which many of my readers are involved. In other “underground” systems of belief, however, black is seen as a symbol of great knowledge, power and strength. When this is carried to an extreme you wind up with devil cults, in which the poorly understood powers of creativity and exuberance rush out in distorted form; the undersides of consciousness are then glorified at the expense of the other, white, “conscious and objective” values.

All of this is also connected with your beliefs about the waking and dreaming states, white being acquainted with the day, and black with the dreaming condition. Here again is the old connection between the God of Light and the Prince of Darkness, or Satan — all distinctions made at various levels of development, and having to do with the nature of the origin of the present consciousness.

Through the ages, again, underground philosophies have tried to combine the two concepts, usually going from one extreme to the other in combating the current ideas in historical terms. In some of these philosophies the daylight is seen as pallid, for example, in comparison with the true brilliance of knowledge that illuminates the dream state, and black is the symbol then of secret knowledge that cannot be found with normal consciousness, or be scrutinized in the light of day.

Here you find stories of black magicians; and, once more, age enters in so that the legends of the wise old man or woman rise into folklore. Death is viewed in terms of value judgments of good and evil and black and white — the annihilation of consciousness being perceived as black, and its resurrection as white.

In many ancient civilizations, the night with its blackness was revered, and the secrets of nighttime consciousness explored. Correlations were made in which such knowledge was used consciously in the daytime. The two seemingly separate aspects of consciousness merged, and there were flowerings of art and civilization that are, in your terms now, almost impossible to conceive. And in such civilizations all races were accorded their place, joyfully, and those of all ages were respected for their particular contributions.

An attempt must be made to correlate seemingly diverse aspects of experience, to combine ideas of light and dark, consciousness and unconsciousness, and so forth, not only in private but mass experience.

In such circumstances, there are not the great artificial divisions created between the two states of consciousness. The conscious mind is better able to remember and assimilate its dreaming experience, and in dreams the self can use its waking experience more efficiently.

Often in the aged you find such frameworks coming into being naturally, but those who awaken spontaneously after four hours consider themselves insomniacs because of their beliefs, and so cannot utilize their experience properly. Both the conscious and unconscious would operate far more effectively, however, under an abbreviated sleeping program, and for those involved in “creative” endeavors this kind of schedule would bring greater intuition and applied knowledge.

It is true that the patterns will have their own flow at certain points in your life. Following your own rhythm, longer or shorter periods will naturally ensue. Your consciousness as you think of it will be expanded through such practices. Generally speaking, eight-hour sleep periods, or longer ones, are not beneficial, nor in larger terms are they natural for the race.

(11:37.) There is a give-and-take chemical reaction, or rather chemical rhythms of reactions, that are far more effective in the shorter sleep periods. Many of you sleep through periods that should be those of your greatest creativity and alertness, in which the conscious and unconscious are most beautifully focused and at one. The conscious mind is often drugged with sleep just when it could be deriving its greatest benefits from the unconscious, and be able to poise most meaningfully in the reality that you know. In these instances the beauty and illumination of your dream state can be clear in the conscious mind, and used to enrich your physical life. Contrasts in your experience will appear to you in their united clarity.