“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Over the last few years, we have spent many hours with our dream records, though the daily time spent in keeping them up to date is negligible. For our own benefit, we frequently kept simple journals of daily events also, so that it was easier to check dreams against daily and weekly happenings and to connect dreams with past, present and future events.

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.

On the way, Peter suddenly went through a traffic light. We ended up in the wrong line of traffic, with cars coming at us from all directions. Vehicles in both other lanes had the green light, and we were right in their path. There was a squeal of brakes as the first car stopped less than two feet away. Yet, miraculously enough, there was no accident. Peter told us later that he just hadn’t seen the light.

I didn’t even connect the dream and the physical event until I checked my dream records as usual that night. Then the connections were clear. Close examination shows that a significant number of details agreed. This was the first incident of this type that happened to us — and we rarely ride with anyone else.

The differences between the dream and physical events — the distortions, in other words — are also obvious. I wasn’t driving as in the dream, Peter was. The near-accident happened about three blocks away from the Water and Walnut dream location. The main elements involving the event were definitely given in the dream, however.

There is no need here to diagram the similarities. In both the dream and physical events, the road is wet from rain. A motorcyclist momentarily loses control of his cycle, and the vehicle veers but goes on. The identical remark is made. Here, however, I think the precognitive event was actually the discussion with my father-in-law, rather than the incident itself.

I’ve mentioned both of these dreams because each was involved with a near-accident. They were the only such dreams I recorded that year and the only such incidents in waking life. For a while, I wondered why I would pick up such an unimportant episode as a man veering on a motorcycle. What connection could there be? No one we knew even owned a cycle, and neither my father-in-law or myself had the slightest idea who the driver was. I hadn’t been on a cycle in years. Neither had he. We had never even talked about cycles together. Then, I remembered that when he was a young man, Rob’s father did have motorcycles. There were family pictures in an old album showing him proudly standing next to one when he was courting Rob’s mother. And years ago, I rode on a cycle from New York to California. So the connection became clear: There was a hidden association in Rob’s father’s mind and my own, an emotional shared experience that “predisposed” us toward an interest in cycles.

This dream was actually a series of four short sequences. In the first, I saw a young, black woman and a young, white woman on the corner of Walnut and Water Streets. They were hanging out clothes, and I stood applauding.

Next, I was teaching school — not an unusual dream under the circumstances, since I was acting as a substitute teacher in the public schools that autumn.

In the third sequence, I was having a long discussion with the white woman of the first episode, and there were a group of other women present.

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.

COMMENT: I wrote the dream down the next morning, wondering what on earth it could mean. On October 17, two days later, I was called to teach. This was only my second time out as a substitute, and I never knew when I would be working until an hour or so before school began. Since I’d never been to this particular school, I left early.

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.

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.

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 run across a fairly large open space that was either dirt or only partially paved. It is pouring rain — darts of it hit the ground so hard that they ping and spatter back. I run to the end of this area and come to a building. Then I hurry past the main part of it to an extension. I look through to a small room or alcove and see two men enter. Behind them other men wait their turn in line. They all wear coveralls of some kind, and their faces are hidden by masks.

There were also some other dream elements that are too involved to mention here. The last part of the dream as given above ended up, for example, with a sequence involving J. P. Priestley, author of Man and Time, an excellent book that I had just finished reading. I woke up at 3 A.M. and wrote the dreams down at once, using the small bedside table. The bedroom was so chilly that I finally finished my notes in the warmer living room. The dreams were still so vivid, particularly the first episode, that I also drew a quick sketch of the building with the decontamination center in it. I could still feel myself running through the radioactive rain, yet the whole thing was so unbelievable that I could hardly see how it could be precognitive. I had some cookies and milk and read my notes over. Even if it was symbolic, I didn’t like it a bit.

COMMENTS: On January 10, six days after the dream, Rob and I made an unexpected visit to the Motor Vehicles Bureau to check on the renewal of our car license. It had been ordered by mail several weeks earlier but had not arrived, though the deadline was approaching. As we stood in line, I picked up one of the pamphlets that were piled on the counters.

The pamphlet was entitled: Highway Signs For Survival. Pictures of various road signs were shown. One read: DECONTAMINATION CENTER; another, MAINTAIN TOP SPEED. This was followed by the legend: “Used On Highways Where Radiological Contamination Is Such As To Limit Permissible Exposure Time.” Another sign read AREA CLOSED, and carried the legend: “Used To Close Roadway Entering An Area From Which All Traffic Is Excluded Because Of Dangerous Radiological Or Biological Contamination.”

I stuck the pamphlet in my pocket and thought no more about it. Then that night as usual I sat down to check my dream records. As soon as I reread the dream for January 3, I saw the obvious connection with the pamphlet and ran to retrieve it. I was so surprised that I called Rob, and together we compared the pamphlet with the dream notes.

With growing excitement, we checked my records. “Almost every sign’s message was carried out in action,” Rob said. “You were running through the radioactive rain to avoid contamination, running for your life, really, and the pamphlet refers to survival several times and ‘Maintain top speed.’”

Looking over my shoulder now, Rob pointed at the sketch I’d done with the dream. “That layout is identical to the one at the License Bureau!” And it was. The Motor Vehicles Bureau is an extension of the county building, as the decontamination center was an extension of another building in the dream. Incidentally, I’d been in the License Bureau only once several years earlier.

Right then and there I made up my list of similarities between dream and physical events and was astonished — precisely because the forseen event was apparently the reading of the pamphlet, which I’d then transformed into that strange dream drama. As I wrote out the list, I discovered points that I’d missed earlier — which is why it is a good idea to make such a list with any involved dream.

“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.”

In the next case, interpretation was simple — and amusing. One night I had a confused dream about a celebration. Rob and I were with a group of people, all laughing and calling out shouts and responses. I had a megaphone. We shouted one word over and over again: “Kangaroo.”

This seemed like a pointless nonsense dream. A few weeks later I received a letter from a friend in California. Something about it struck a familiar chord: The whole bottom of one page was given over to a sketch of a kangaroo. In the letter, my friend also wrote a page about a family celebration.

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.

“No. I’m sure I would have remembered,” I replied. But I checked my dream records. Sure enough, on December 24, I dreamed that Mike was “gone” and Mary could not find him. This was the only reference to Mike in any of my records, but I’d forgotten the dream entirely.