“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

He began a long lecture on the methods of handling aggression and expressing it in acceptable ways. At this point, my critical self separated from my dream self who was receiving the lecture. [In other words, Sue became aware of herself and the dream self.] My critical self instantly felt put off, since it could not understand or translate the lecture. It seemed to have a definite function, though, perhaps in connection with the physical body. Both selves were equally aware.

The situation can be serious in varying degrees, according to the impetus and intensity of the original cause behind the illness. If the impetus is powerful, then the impeding action will be of more serious nature, blocking huge reserves of energy for its own purposes. It obviously becomes part of the personality’s psychological structure, the physical, electrical and chemical structures, invading to some extent even the dream system.

The complicated organism of human personality with its physical structure has evolved a highly differentiated ‘I’ consciousness, whose very nature is such that it attempts to preserve the apparent boundaries of identity. To do so it must choose between actions.

But beneath the sophisticated gestalt are the simpler foundations of its being and, indeed, the very acceptance of all stimuli without which identity would be impossible. Without this acquiescence, the physical structure would never maintain itself, for the atoms and molecules within it constantly accept painful stimuli and suffer even their own destruction. They are aware of their own separateness within action and of their reality within it.

Let’s consider Sue’s symptoms, caused by explosive and repressed aggression, in relation to Seth’s statements. Sue had been taught as a child to repress emotions, but the time had come when expression was imperative. She wanted to strike out but didn’t feel that she should, and the denied actions then inhibited the function of the right arm that would ordinarily do the striking. According to Seth, even the calcium deposits were accumulations of repressed energy stored up in the body.

In her dream, Sue was given information that told her how to release and use this energy creatively. While she remembered the dream clearly and saw its instant results, the information was not given to the conscious self (not even in the dream drama) but to other layers more intimately concerned with body-mind mechanisms. Complete mobility of the arm and shoulder resulted, but there was still some soreness from the calcium deposits that remained.

“Much better,” the second voice replied. “The yoga exercises are repairing the effects worked on the physical system. She is also learning not to channel aggressions onto the shoulder.”

After six days of the treatment, all soreness disappeared, as did the calcium lumps. Since then, Sue was bothered by the shoulder during a few stressful periods, but she learned that a simple reading of the original Seth dream immediately returned the shoulder to normal once again. These experiences were highly valuable and produced undeniable physical results which last as long as Sue allows for normal release and expression of emotional energy.

According to Seth, poor health is caused mainly by destructive mental and feeling patterns that directly affect the body because of the particular range within the electromagnetic system in which they fall. Bad health, for example, does not happen first, resulting in unhealthy thoughts. It is the other way around. Seth states,

Many such intuitions appear when the personality is dissociated or in a dream state. … The effect of any thought is quite precise and definite and set into motion because of the nature of its own electromagnetic identity. The physical body operates within certain electromagnetic patterns and is adversely affected by others. These effects change the actual molecular structure of the cells, for better or worse, and because of the laws of attraction, habitual patterns will operate. A destructive thought, then, is dangerous not only to the present state of the organism but is also dangerous in terms of the ‘future.’

Seth first spoke of therapeutic dreams in the 198th session for October 13, 1965 — though he insisted from the beginning that the inner self had the ability to cure the body. In this session, he explained exactly how such a dream acted upon the physical system.

Now I was too frightened to touch the radio again or to pull the plug from the socket and disconnect it. (This radio again, had no physical existence.) Instead, I ran through the bedroom and bath, out into the living room.

For the first time I wondered: Could this be some kind of dream? A rush of disappointment flooded through me. If I was dreaming then the apartments would disappear when I awakened. I would never get to explore them! I looked at the yard again. It was our yard. The environment was brilliantly clear. And then, out of nowhere it seemed, a sense of freedom and exhilaration flashed — I could explore the apartments if I wanted to! I was out of my body. My body was in bed.

With that realization, my senses became super-alert. The yard and everything within my vision was significant, alive, super-real — seemingly more real than at any other moment of my life. At the same time, it occured to me that I had lain down at 10:30, and, surely, it was past the half-hour I had given myself. For some reason the clock hadn’t awakened me. I would have to return. All the while, I stood fully conscious and alert out in the yard. Only then did I remember the suggestions I had given myself before lying down. I decided to return to my body at once.

With no transition at all, I sprang up to a sitting position in bed. Immediately, I checked the clock. The alarm had not rung because I had not pushed the little button down far enough. It was not quite 11 A.M., in any case. Only half an hour of physical time had passed.

I won’t go into the out-of-body implications of that experience until later in this book; here, I’d like to emphasize, instead, the mood-changing elements of the “dream” and what it meant to me. In the next session, Seth explained it and showed how reincarnational background, present problems and personal symbolism were all used in the dream drama. Portions of the experience were dreams. Others were valid subjective events of a different kind, and the entire production was in response to my suggestions for a mood-changing dream.

I am happy to see that Ruburt tried out the material on therapeutic dreams. The basic action of the first dream involved his reception of several voices. Though he does not remember this, they spoke words of encouragement. They presented excellent evidence of his own abilities, for initially they were crystal-clear and without distortion. There were four in all — all male. They belonged to personalities no longer within the physical system, but who were closely allied with Ruburt in past lives. The fourth voice was mine. This was an attempt to build Ruburt’s confidence — to show how clear reception can be if his abilities are fully utilized.

The above portions therefore were actually not dreams but experiences happening while he was dissociated. They shocked him; hence, the shock later on when he turned this into a dream. When he heard the voices, instead of becoming confident, he fell into a dream state. He did not want to accept the responsibility that he felt his abilities put upon him, and so in the dream, he looked for an outside source for the voices and dreamed the radio sequences. In the dream, however, the voices continue [after he switched the radio off] because he knows he is picking them up from a channel that is not physical.

As the personality is changed by any action, so it is changed by its own dreams. As it is molded by the exterior environment, so it is molded by the dreams that it creates and which help form its interior world. To the whole self, there is little differentiation made between exterior or interior actions. The ego makes such distinctions. The core of the personality does not. … As an individual changes his physical situation through reacting to it, so he changes his interior or psychic situation in the same way. …

If this solution fails, the impeding action will then materialize as a physical illness or undesirable psychological condition. If an individual has strong feelings of dependency that cannot be expressed in daily life, he will express these in dreams. If he does not, then he may develop an illness that allows him to be dependent in physical life. If he is aware of difficulties, however, he may request dreams that will release this feeling.

It follows that [by] using suggestion, various problems can be solved within the dream state. The inner ego of which we have spoken is the director of such unifying activities. It is the ‘I’ of your dreams, having somewhat the same position within the inner self as the ego has to the outer physical body.

Both psychological and physical illnesses could largely be avoided through dream therapy. Rather harmlessly, aggressive tendencies could also be given freedom in the dream condition. Through such therapy, actions would be allowed greater spontaneity. In the case of the release of aggressiveness, the individual involved would experience this within the dream state and hurt no one. Suggestions could also be given so that he learned to understand the aggressiveness through watching himself while in the dream state.

We are not attempting to substitute dream action for physical action, generally speaking. Here we are speaking of potentially dangerous situations in which an individual shows signs of being unable to cope with these psychological actions through ordinary methods of adaption. No one can deny that a war fought by dreaming men at specified times would be less harmful than a physical war — to return to my flight of fancy. There would be reprecussions, however, that would be unavoidable, [for again, basically, the personality does not differentiate between sleeping and waking events].

Again, if the personality is fairly well balanced, then his existence in dream reality will reinforce his physical existence. You are involved in a juggling of realities. It is necessary to see the personality as it operates within both, if you are interested in understanding its whole experience.