“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You don’t have to take precognition on faith. If you keep careful dream records, sooner or later you’ll find your own evidence of it. Each of my own precognitive dreams made a significant impression on me at the time and represented proof that I was moving in the right direction. Now I am much more interested in how precognition works, what triggers it and what translates into dream experience.

Next, I floated above a car, which was driven by another me. (Actually, I do not drive because of poor eyesight.) The car approached our corner, at Walnut and Water Streets. Others were also in the car. As I watched from my floating position, the “driving me” made an error at the light, and suddenly we ended up in the middle of a line of traffic. Cars came from all directions. I was terrified — certain that an accident would result. But none occurred.

The following two dreams bewildered, confused and intrigued me. Each of them contains subconscious distortion, and strong precognitive elements interwound with other dream material. This type of dream may tell us more about the ways we interpret and receive precognitive information than dreams in which the forseen events and the physical ones are identical.

Then, the scene switched again. The white woman was speaking on the telephone. In an aside, she disclosed that the caller was her husband, who was out of town. He was telling her that they must move. She was very embarrassed because she would not have time to give proper notice to the school or landlord. Then she laughed into the phone and said, “What?” in tones of mock disbelief. At the same time I saw in my mind’s eye a picture of the house into which she would move. It reminded me of Dr. C’s home in the country.

In the hallway, I was surprised to run into Anna Taylor. She lived in an apartment right at the corner of Walnut and Water Streets, but she was not a close friend — barely an acquaintance — and we saw her rarely. I knew she was a teacher, but hadn’t the foggiest idea in what school. When she saw me, she burst out laughing, and said, “What? What?” in tones of great mock disbelief — as the woman had used in the dream. She didn’t know I was teaching and had just been transferred to this school.

Immediately she told me that her husband had called her two days previously to tell her that they must move. He was out of town and had just learned that he was to be transferred to another area. Anna said that she was terribly embarrassed since they had to move quickly, and she wouldn’t have time to give the proper notice.

We met at lunch in the teachers’ room where we ate with a group of women, including one lovely, black girl who was particularly intelligent. Here Anna told me that she and her husband were househunting around Albany, New York. Later, in a free period, she showed me her first-grade classroom, specifically pointing out the closet and mentioning the difficulty involved in helping the children hang up their clothes.

After school I went home and sat down for a cup of coffee when the phone rang. It was Anna, calling to tell me that her husband had just called to say he had definitely rented a house in Albany. This was the first time in four months I had seen Anna, and the only time we ever spoke together on the phone.

In a dream so confused with definite precognitive elements and episodes that seem not to fit in, a simple diagram usually helps me to see the situation more clearly. So here is the listing of similarities between the physical and dream events that I prepared that afternoon as I tried to check out the dream:

I wrote the list down and stared at it. Why hadn’t I known Anna in the dream? And why the episode in which I saw her hang out clothes in the yard? I’d never dreamed of Anna before. Why now? Then suddenly the answers came to me. Anna herself wasn’t really important to me. The information was really that the apartment in the house next door, on the corner, would be vacant. The clothing sequence was wrong in that no one really hung out clothes. Yet it was valid, symbolically. In the dream the women hang out clothes in the yard … and Anna showed me the children’s closet at school, commenting on clothes. Anna’s last name was Taylor. A tailor is someone involved with clothes. I think I’d known the name all the while and in the dream translated it into action; the clothes episode would, then, really identify Anna and forsee the event in which she showed me the clothes closet.

I just sat there, laughing. Dreams could be like charades, then, in which we act out words rather than see or speak them. Since this dream, I’ve always watched out for such acting-out and in many cases discovered clues that helped me interpret dreams that otherwise remained closed to scrutiny.

The next dream was far more bizarre and rather frightening, but it taught me even more about the nature of dreaming and illustrated many points that Seth had made earlier. Here are my original dream notes:

I realize that this is a decontamination center, closed to the public, very dangerous, and I become highly frightened. The men are obviously doing something connected with their line of work and are protected from radiation by their clothes. Now I remember that earlier I had seen a sign that warned me of this. I run back through the open area, only now I realize that the rain is radioactive. I run as quickly as I can to minimize the contamination. The rain spatters on my legs. After this, I meet Rob and some friends and tell them that from now on I will be more cautious.

“No, but I’m sure there must be an emotional connection someplace.” I shook my head, but then suddenly the answer came to me. “Bundu,” I said. “My science fiction novel that came out in Fantasy and Science Fiction years ago. It was on events after a world destruction. And I did another story and some of my early poetry on the same theme.”

“Something else, though,” I said. “Its been coming to me in bits and pieces. What I really think happened is this: I left my body, wandered in my dream body around the County House grounds, went inside, saw the pamphlet, and then made up that dream about it. I know you can dream out-of-body as well as in it. I’ve caught myself doing it.”

To me, there is great excitement in learning how the unconscious works, not just generally but specifically — in personal instances. In the same way that I acted out the original forseen event — the pamphlet — I’m convinced that other extrasensory data is picked up and woven into our daydreams, fantasies and creative works.

In March of 1968, for example, I received a letter in which my mother told me that Mike Myers, an old friend, was dead, and that his widow was very upset. I hadn’t seen Mike or Mary in more than a dozen years. They lived in a distant town. “Maybe you dreamed Mike died,” Rob said.

But there are precognitive dreams that tell me precisely what I want to know when I want to know it — if I’m deeply motivated enough to request them through suggestion. These are fascinating, not only because they are practical, but because they suggest the awesome abilities of the inner self to solve problems for us and to obtain information that we consider vital.