“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

From 1963 until 1966, Rob and I worked alone, holding the twice-weekly sessions and following Seth’s instructions. I had several spontaneous out-of-body experiences during Seth sessions and while doing the exercise Seth calls psy-time. These checked out in physical reality and are recorded in my book, The Seth Material. Some of these episodes concerned strangers who had written to me. In out-of-body states, I correctly described distant environments giving specific, checkable information. Such instances did much to convince me that projections were not just imaginative dramatizations.

In the meantime, the dream-recall experiments led first to spontaneous projections from the dream state, and then to deliberate experimentation. Rob and I were unacquainted with the information on projection to be found in esoteric literature. I was incredulous at the instructions and information given by Seth, yet I’d already had enough experience to know that Seth’s “theoretical material” worked. As we followed it, our own results brought the material itself to life.

Following Seth’s instructions, I was learning to recognize when I was dreaming while I was dreaming, manipulate dream events if I wanted to, leave my body and separate halluncinations from reality.

We tried many experiments with various results, over the next three years. When I began my psychic classes, some of my students began experiments of their own. Before I give some examples from our records, here is some of the material on projection that Seth gave us during that time. It includes instructions, hints and the descriptions of the various realities in which the projectionist may find himself.

The third we may call the true projection form. In it, it is possible to travel beyond your solar system, and to perceive the past, present and futures of other systems as well as your own. The various forms that you use do not dictate your experience, however. You may begin in one form and change to another — or go from the first to the third. On such occasions you must pass through in reverse direction [on returning]. The forms merely represent stages of consciousness.

The actual physical window was behind his head. He felt impelled to have a window in front of him in order to get out of the physical house, and the window through which he went was a fabrication of his own, a symbol. I found this amusing. He did not have the confidence, you see, to see himself passing through the physical walls, as he did in fact. Instead, he formed the imaginary window and projected through it.

But nothing happened. He just hung there. Suddenly he realized that he was out of his body and didn’t know what to do next. He yelled out for me, but I was in my physical body, humming merrily out in the kitchen, and I never heard a thing. Desperately, Rob wished for some support, and quite spontaneously he created a child’s scooter that appeared beneath him. He could see the yard and garage clearly but the image of a grown-up man on a scooter up two stories from the ground was just too much — he snapped back to his body.

Your excursions with form one will be within your own system, largely connected to the earth, although past, present and future may be involved. You may, for example, visit New York in the year 2000.

The projections here are fairly short in duration, though exceptionally clear. You may encounter phantoms from your own subconscious, however, and they will seem exceedingly real. If you realize that you are projecting, you may simply order any unpleasant phantoms to disappear, and they will do so. You may banish a nightmare also, if you realize that it is a product of your own subconscious. If you treat it as a reality, however, then you must deal with it as such until you realize its origin or return to the ordinary dream state.

In form two you will not, as a rule, encounter any subconscious phantoms. Ordinary dream elements will not be as frequent, nor will they intrude as much. A longer duration of projection is possible. The vividness is extraordinary. Here you will begin to perceive quite clearly constructions that are not your own, where earlier these are but dimly glimpsed. A certain period of orientation will be necessary, simply because these other constructions may seem bewildering. Some will exist in your future. Some may have existed in your past, and some were thought of, but never materialized.

But the reality of all of these constructions will be equally vivid, you see, for they are, indeed, equally real. I will give you a simple example. You may find yourself in a room with certain people. Later, upon awakening, you realize that both the people and setting belong to a particular sequence in a novel. You think then: ‘This was no projection, then, but only a dream.’

It may, however, be a valid projection. The room and people exist but not in a way that you endorse as reality. They exist in another dimension, but as a rule you cannot perceive it. [To Rob:] The paintings that you will paint exist now. It is possible for you to project yourself into one of your own future landscapes. This would not be an imaginative projection. This is what I am trying to tell you.

You may find yourself, for example, in the middle of a battle that was once planned in some general’s mind, a battle that never materialized in physical reality. In such a case, incidentally, you were not a part of the battle and could not be harmed. However, you might be attracted enough to project yourself spontaneously into the body of one of the soldiers, in which case you could experience pain until your own fear pulled you back. As you learn control, such mistakes vanish.

I left the room almost at once and appeared in a house supposedly owned by friends, Jack and Lydia. This was not their normal house in daily life, though, and I was aware of this. Here I stood talking to Rob again, quite forgetting that he was at work. As I spoke to him, I turned my head and saw another Rob, a perfect double, standing in a room directly across the corridor. Amazed, I told Rob to stand where he was, while I moved closer to the door to check my observations.

“Look, Rob. Come here,” I said, and Rob came to the doorway where he saw his own double clearly. They stared at each other, the double looking as amazed as Rob was.

Ruburt saw two of you. He saw your second form as described earlier [in Session 262]. The other was Ruburt’s dream form of you, created by himself in the dream state. When you appeared in your form two, he was conscious enough to recognize your arrival and then point out the dream image he had already created. You were able to see it also, because of your own state.

“The whole dream was in images. I saw the universe or whole reality, an infinity of spirals and stars, in multi-dimensional depth. Someone told me that most of our cherished ideas about the nature of reality were completely wrong. This was a revelation-type dream, but I couldn’t remember much of it at all upon awakening. Someone was guiding me, I believe.”

You remember that I listed briefly the three forms used during projections. In the first form, you usually use certain inner senses. In the second form, you use more of these, and in the third form you attempt to use all of them, though very rarely is this successful. You should notice the overall form of perception that you seem to be using. You automatically shield yourselves from stimuli that are too strong for your own rate of development. This kind of balancing can lead to an unevenness of experience, however, in any given projection.

As you know, it is almost impossible for you to be aware of the full perceptions possible, for the ego would not stand for it. Often, even in simple dreams, however, you will feel concepts or understand a particular piece of information without a word being spoken. In some projections, you will also experience a concept, and, at first, you may not understand what is happening. In these, you experience as actual the innermost reality of a given concept.

In the third form, your experiences will be most vivid. They may involve you in other systems beside your own, and you will have little contact with the physical environment. For this reason, projections in the third form are the most difficult to maintain. There are dangers that do not exist when the other two forms are used.

Using the third form, there could be a tendency for you not to recognize your own physical situation. It would be difficult to carry the memories of the present ego personality with you. This third form is the vehicle of the inner self. The disorientation that it feels is the same that it will feel when the physical body is deserted at the point of death. This disorientation is only temporary, and when at death the form is severed from the physical body, then all the memories and identity within the electromagnetic structure become part of the inner self. This form is sometimes used for purposes of instruction, however, or to acquaint the whole personality with the circumstances that strongly affect it.

So at least twice a week I lay down to experiment, my body on the couch or bed, the alarm clock set, my house in order, while I try to “get out” to see what I could find. I seem to have a curious talent for this, and rarely do I fail to leave my body when I’ve really made up my mind to go. Yet for periods at a time, I just concentrate on the Seth sessions, with Seth on the one side of reality and Rob on the other — two good guardians. Then I avoid out-of-body experiments. A sense of strangeness seems connected with them then. My consciousness, so used to my flesh, says that I’ve had enough. And I’m afraid to leave my body in the wintertime. In black and white print, this sounds ridiculous, yet, emotionally, the statement has a logic that speaks louder than all my deliberate suggestions to the contrary. So I experiment between May and November, coming in for the winter when the wild skies of fall are over and the bone-chilling cold settles in.