“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

19
Out-of-Body Experiences from the Dream State

Flying Dreams
Dream Mobility of Consciousness

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.

In the meantime, we joined a book club that dealt with psychic phenomena. Much to my amazement, their literature listed several books on projection. We ordered Oliver Fox’s Astral Projection. Astonished, I discovered that my experiences followed his rather closely, even though most of my projections to that date had been spontaneous. I decided to do more deliberate experimentation from the dream state by napping during the day — something I hadn’t thought of earlier.

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.

But often, after doing all this, I would simply fall back to sleep again, dream normally until morning, and lose the clear memory of my experiences. I reasoned that if I just napped for an hour or so in the day, then I’d be less apt to forget. It became a great joke between Rob and myself, this “laying down on the job” or going to sleep in order to go to work. To some extent, it also upset my ordinary sleep schedule, so I usually experimented in this way for only a few weeks at a time.

“Dream Bodies”

The dream body is the one with which you are most familiar. It has been called the astral body. It strikes you as being physical when you are in it, but you can do things with it that can’t be done ordinarily. You can levitate, for example. As a rule, however, you do not go through walls with this body. This is the body you use for ordinary dreams. Levitation is possible with it but on a limited basis.

In the first form, it is possible to perceive the past, present or future on a limited basis. In the second form, this perception is increased, the scope of consciousness widened. This is the form you will use if you meet by appointment with others in the dream state.

At physical death, after the last reincarnation, then the normal form is the dream body, and excursions are made from this point. It is possible, as mentioned, to suddenly switch from the third form to the dream body, but with a considerable jolt to consciousness.

(Since Seth makes further reference to this incident, I’ll describe it briefly, though waking projections will not generally be discussed in this book which is devoted to dreams and related material. I was so reassured by Fox’s experiences that I instantly tried to project from a waking state. I lay down on the bed to support my body, closed my eyes and used all my will-power to eject myself out. Almost at once, and I must admit, much to my astonishment, I succeeded. There was a wrench, almost painful, a click at the back of my neck and I found myself flying through a window at seemingly incredible speed, out of the house at second floor level, gaining altitude and heading over Water Street toward the mountains in the distance. My head felt bursting with pressure. Fully alert and conscious, I was terrified of falling.

I realized only later that the cord or cable I’d felt was the astral cord. The experience put me off enough that for some time following I always used a light trance or dream framework for projections. Now Seth said:)

Now, when you project from the dream body, consciously you are already outside of the physical one. You have already made the initial change away from physical focus. The mass of valid projections are made from the dreaming body. When the excursion is over, the return to the dream body is made with no strain, you see, for the ego is little concerned. In many such cases, however, the knowledge is not available to the waking self.

That particular experience was my most “shocking,” and I’m just as glad it happened in the beginning. Later, I always specified that I wanted to get out of my body in my room or apartment or go to another specific location. Very rarely do you go wide-awake, speeding out of your body like a rocket. Dream projections are quite different, in any case, and the ego is already protected, as mentioned by Seth.

Form one will spring out of an ordinary dream state. In spontaneous projections, you may become conscious in form one, project, return to the ordinary dream state and from there project again several times. You can expect these particular projections to be difficult to interpret now, though you may find the experience intact in the middle of any given dream record.

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.’

There are various situations you must learn to handle, attractions and repulsions which could pull you willy-nilly in any direction. Experience will teach you how to handle these. What is needed is a steady maintenance of identity under conditions which will be new as far as your conscious awareness is concerned. I cannot emphasize too strongly that projections into other dimensions do occur. Many such instances are often considered chaotic dreams because there is no way to check them against physical events since they did not occur in physical terms.

Let us take an example: While asleep, you project into 1982. There you see yourself considering various courses of action. For a moment you are aware of a sense of duality as you view this older self. You communicate with this other self; and we will go into this sort of thing more deeply in another session. In any case, your future self heeds what you say. Now in the actual future you are the self who hears the voice of a past self, perhaps in a dream, or perhaps in a projection into the past.

A few days after this session I tried my first deliberate “projection nap,” as I called it. Instead of going to my typewriter at 8:00 A.M. as usual, I lay down and set the alarm for 9:30.1 gave myself the suggestion that I would go to sleep, recognize my state when I began to dream and project my consciousness out of my body. Paper and pen were on the bedside table. I also closed the doors so I would not hear the doorbell or phone.

I fell asleep at once. The next thing I knew I seemed to be in a lovely garden that I had planted myself in some undisclosed past. Then I thought that I was wide awake, telling Rob about the dream. As I chatted with him, a nagging doubt bothered me. Was I really awake, or was this a “false awakening as described by both Seth and Fox, and which I had experienced in the past? I looked about the bedroom. Everything seemed perfectly normal. It was difficult to imagine that I might really be asleep and dreaming, and not awake. Yet I’d gone to bed to experiment, I knew, and to make sure I decided to take it for granted that I really was dreaming, despite the semblance of normality.

Then I fell into a brief period of unconsciousness. I came to to find myself back in the garden I had seen earlier. A woman beckoned to me. I recognized her instantly as Miss Lizzie Roohan, a neighbor of ours years ago, who had been dead for at least fifteen years. Remembering her death, I was quite surprised to see her and even more intrigued by her appearance. Although she had been in her eighties when she died and in her sixties when I first knew her, she looked like a woman in her middle thirties. We carried on a conversation that I did not remember later. I fell into a normal dream which was also forgotten before the alarm awakened me.

The sensation of intense speed was very real at the beginning of the experience, and during the entire episode I struggled to retain a critical sense which I alternately achieved and lost. The experiment was a success, in that I was convinced I’d left my body from the dream state. But what about Rob’s doubles and Miss Roohan?

Ruburt’s projection from the dream state was legitimate, though his control was poor. The plants Ruburt saw represented the books upon which he has worked and is working. The Lydia episode contained many ordinary dream elements. [To Rob:] You were indeed present with Ruburt in some of his travels, but you have forgotten.

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.

Now, when Ruburt dreams that he has discussed a dream with you, in most cases he has done so. You both converse quite naturally in forms number two. With enough traveling, these conversations can be recorded in both of your dreams. The amount of work to be done here is astounding, but you can both do this, and in so doing, you can increase man’s knowledge of the potentials of the dream state.

During this period, of course, we were recording all the dreams we could capture. Usually at least one of mine per night dealt with flying or levitation. During a series of dreams I seemed to be working to perfect my “flying technique,” and was taking lessons from others. Then, in the middle of several dreams such as this, I dreamed the following, according to my notes:

“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.”

In Session 268, June 15, 1966, Seth mentioned this dream and continued his information on projection.

“More on The Dream Body, Inner Senses and 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.

Ruburt [in the dream given before this session] was in the third form, and he did project beyond your solar system. This was still a projection within the physical universe, however. He was given information that he did not remember. When you explore the inside of a concept, you act it out. You form a temporary but very vivid image production. If Ruburt’s experience had been only this, it still would have been pertinent, for when you understand a concept in such a way the knowledge is never forgotten. It becomes part of your physical cells and your electromagnetic structure.

I want to make this clearer, however. Suppose that you suddenly understand the concept of oneness with the universe, and that this inner sensing of concepts is to be used. You would then construct dream images, a multitudinous variety of shapes and forms meant to represent the complicated forms of life. You would then have the experience of entering each of those lives. You would not think of what it was like to be a bird. You would momentarily be one. This does involve a projection of sorts, yet still must be called by contrast a pseudo-projection. A normal projection would involve one of the three body forms.

I want to mention the difference in experience and sensation between projections from a dream state and those from the trance state and also what Ruburt calls awake-seeming dreams, for there are many things here that you do not know, and they are fairly important.

Some of you may call dream projections hallucinatory. Yet nothing of that kind happened to us before the Seth sessions. The instructions we were given worked. A curious new second life began, adjacent to our normal one. Some may call it a fantasy life, but surely it is no more fantastic or mysterious than the ordinary world in which we all find ourselves.