“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

On the other hand, areas of ordinary behavior that may have seemed opaque before, cloudy or dark — personal characteristic behavior that was not understood, for instance — may suddenly become quite clear as a result of this transformation, in which the shadowy aspects of the unconscious are perceived as brilliant.

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.

As a result, other individually built-up beliefs that depended upon the existence of such opposites also spontaneously break down.

In your present system of beliefs, and with the dubious light in which the unconscious is considered, a fear of the emotions is often generated. Not only are they often hindered in waking life, then, but censored as much as possible in dreams. Their expression becomes very difficult; great blockages of energy occur, which in your terms can result in neurotic or even stronger, psychotic, behavior.

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.

(Long pause at 10:24.) You did not simply come upon your sleep patterns. They are not the result of your technology or industrial habits. Instead they are a part of those beliefs that caused you to develop your technological, industrial society. They emerged as you began to categorize experience more and more, to see yourselves as separate from the spring or fountainhead of your own psychological reality. In natural circumstances the animals, while sleeping at night, are still partially alert against predators and danger. There is within the innate characteristics of the mammalian brain, then, a great balance in which complete physical relaxation can occur in sleep, while consciousness is maintained in a “partially suspended, passive-yet-alert” manner. That state allows conscious participation and interpretation of “unconscious” dream activity. The condition gives the body its refreshment, yet it does not lie inert for such long periods of time.