“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

When you find yourself as alert, responsive, and intellectual in the dream state as you are in waking life, it becomes impossible to operate within the old framework. This does not mean that in all dreams that particular kind of awareness is achieved, but it is often accomplished within the suggested wake-sleep pattern.

Animals follow their own natural waking-sleeping schedules, and in their way derive far greater benefits from both states than you, and use them with greater effectiveness — particularly along the lines of the body’s built-in system of therapy. They know exactly when to alter their patterns to longer or shorter sleep periods, therefore adjusting the adrenaline output and regulating all of the bodily hormones.

Many of your misconceptions about the nature of reality are directly related to the division you place between your sleeping and waking experience, your conscious and unconscious activity. Opposites seem to occur that do not exist in actuality. Myths, symbols and rationalizations all become necessary to explain the seeming divergences, the seeming contradictions between realities that appear to be so different.

The inhibition of such emotions also interferes with the nervous system and its therapeutic devices. These repressed emotions, and the whole charge behind such distorted concepts about the unconscious, result in a projection outward upon others. In your individual area there will be persons upon whom you will project all of those charged, frightening emotions or characteristics. At the same time you will be drawn to those individuals because the projections represent a part of you.

Animal consciousness is different than your own. With yours, a finer discrimination is necessary so that unconscious material can be assimilated. (Long pause.) All of mankind’s developments however are latent in the animal brain, and many attributes of which you are unaware are latent in your own. The biological pathways for them already exist.

(Very actively delivered:) In your current beliefs, again, consciousness is equated in very limited terms with your conception of intellectual behavior: you consider this to be a peak of mental achievement, growing from the “undifferentiated” perceptions of childhood, and returning ignominiously to them again in old age. Such wake-sleep patterns as I have suggested would acquaint you with the great creative and energetic portions of psychological behavior — that are not undifferentiated at all, but simply distinct from your usual concepts of consciousness; and these operate throughout your life.

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.

(“All right. Good night, Seth.”