“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Good evening.

(“Good evening, Seth.”)

There are many other natural and spontaneous kinds of comprehension that can also result from the waking and sleeping rhythms that I have suggested. The unconscious, the color black, and death all have strongly negative connotations in which the inner self is feared; the dream state is mistrusted and often suggests thoughts of both death and/or evil. But changed wake-sleep habits can, again, bring about a transformation in which it is obvious that dreams contain great wisdom and creativity, that the unconscious is indeed quite conscious, and that in fact the individual sense of identity can be retained in the dream state. The fear of self-annihilation, symbolically thought of as death, can then no longer apply as it did before.

In humans, the idea of nutrition is also involved. With your habits the body is literally starved for long periods at night, then often overfed during the day. Important therapeutic information that is given in dreams, and meant to be recalled, is not remembered because your sleep habits plunge you into what you think of as unconsciousness far too long.

(10:46. “Well, it was a good trance,” Jane laughed, “in spite of bugs and phones.” Then, at 10:56: “He’s about ready again….”)

The division between the two aspects of experience begins to take on the characteristics of completely diverse behavior. The unconscious becomes more and more unfamiliar to consciousness. Those beliefs build up about it, and the symbolisms involved are exaggerated. The unknown seems to be threatening and degenerate. The color black assumes stronger tendencies in its connection with evil — something to be avoided. Self-annihilation seems to be a threat ever-present in the dream or sleep state. At the same time all of those flamboyant, creative, spontaneous, emotional surges that emerge normally from the unconscious become feared and projected outward, then, upon enemies, other races and creeds.

Sexual behavior obviously will be considered depraved by those most afraid of their own sensual natures. They will ascribe it to primitive or evil or unconscious sources, and even attempt to censor their dreams in that regard. They will then project the greatest sexual license upon those groups they choose to represent their own repressed behavior. If sex is equated with evil, the other group will of course be considered evil.

If a young adult believes that sex is good but old age is bad, then he or she will find it impossible to consider exuberant sexuality as a portion of an older person’s experience. In the dream state the child and the old man or woman can exist simultaneously, and the individual is made quite aware of the full range of creaturehood.

(11:12.) The wisdom of the child and of the aged are both available. Lessons from “future experience” are also at hand. There are quite natural physical mechanisms in the body that provide for such interaction. You deny yourself many of these advantages however through the artificial alienation that you have set up by your present wake-sleep patterns, to which, again, your ideas of good and evil are intimately connected.

You must give up any ideas that you have as to the unsavory nature of unconscious activity. You must learn to believe in the goodness of your being. Otherwise you will not explore these other states of your own reality.

When you trust yourself then you will trust your own dream interpretations — and these will lead you to greater self-understanding. Your beliefs of good and evil will become much more clear to you, and you will no longer need to project repressed tendencies out upon others in exaggerated fashion.

(“All right. Good night, Seth.”