“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.

The blacks were to be oppressed then on the one hand, and yet treated indulgently as children on the other. There was always a great fear that the blacks as a race would escape their bounds — given an inch they would take a yard — simply because the whites so greatly feared the nature of the inner self, and recognized the power that they tried so desperately to strangle within themselves.

Both groups acquiesced to their roles. In larger terms, of course, each has belonged to other races in other times and places; or to be more accurate, in simultaneous existences one plays out the other’s role.

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.

The light of illumination is experienced as white, yet it often appears to delineate the darkness of the soul, or to shine in the black of night. So in your terms of reference the two are dependent one upon the other, changing their connotations according to your beliefs.

Those of you who are able will discover that a somewhat altered arrangement will work greatly to your advantage. I suggest a six-hour sleeping block of time at one session, and no more. If you still feel the need for a greater amount of rest, then a two-hour-at-the-most nap can be added.

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.