“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

As the Seth sessions continued, our activities fell generally into three main divisions. First of all, the emphasis was on the delivery of the Seth Material itself, as in the twice-weekly sessions Seth continued to explain the nature of nonphysical reality. Second, we became involved in trying to obtain “evidential” material, some definite instances of extrasensory perception on Seth’s part. Along these lines, we embarked on long-distance tests with a psychologist and a year’s series of envelope tests in which Seth was asked to identify the contents of doubly-sealed envelopes. At the same time, Seth began to send me on out-of-body journeys during some sessions and to offer, on his own, other instances of “paranormal” activity.

Third, we were involved in vigorous subjective activity as we began to experiment with Seth’s psy-time regularly and to follow his suggestions concerning dream investigation, recall and utilization. When we began, neither Rob nor I really suspected that there was a separate dream dimension in which dreams happened. Though Seth told us that the experiments in dream recall would automatically make our consciousness more flexible, his real meaning didn’t come through to me until I found myself manipulating dreams and later having out-of-body experiences from the dream state.

Just reading such ideas will never convince you of their validity. Seth has always emphasized that all true knowledge must be directly experienced; therefore, I will include throughout this book his instructions and suggestions for dream recall, investigation and manipulation.

The method of dream recall just given will allow many people to remember more dreams in a month than they previously did in their entire lives. Variations will occur, however. Periods of excellent recall are sometimes followed by poorer ones, and each individual seems to have his own cycle of significant activity.

Peg and Bill Gallagher, friends of ours, attended the next session in which Seth continued with his suggestions for our dream experiments. He started out in a jovial manner: I am indeed glad to see that you are all in such high spirits. For a spirit, I am in a rather high mood myself. Of course, I welcome our Jesuit and cat-lover, as always. (Seth always referred to Bill as “The Jesuit” because of his quick, inquiring mind and to Peg as “the cat-lover,” humorously, because of her strong dislike for cats.) After a few more personal remarks, he launched into the discussion.

Now and then with Ruburt, to a greater or lesser degree, my own habits therefore show through, for I use his muscles in a different way than he does. But scientifically, this would not be proof of my existence as an independent personality who has survived death. Not that this concerns me, for it does not.

Until we actually tried the dream experiments, we didn’t really have too clear an idea of what to expect. This series of sessions in which Seth explained dream reality and gave us instructions about exploring it, always struck me as highly evocative, yet oddly ambiguous. In a way, Seth was as nebulous as dreams are, but we already had over two thousand pages of manuscript he had dictated through me in trance; and surely he had changed our lives. Now here he was, telling us how to travel through a territory more naturally his, I thought, than ours.

For this series of sessions, we had also moved into the quieter bedroom. Seth usually devoted the first hour or so to his discussion on dreams and the last part of the sessions were given over to the experiments mentioned earlier with the envelopes and the long-distance tests with the psychologist. Compared to the large living room, our bedroom was quite small, and it was quite warm during these summer months of 1965.