“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I do not always take what is said at face value. Telegraph messages alone mean something different than the data presented, the dots and dashes that are only symbols for the information they contain. To make sense to us as physical creatures, any “truth” must undergo transformations, be couched in certain terms or we couldn’t understand it. Distortion may be part of the message — or even the medium through which it must come.

Now, here are my instructions. You may induce a medium trance in whatever way you choose. On occasion, this will be almost spontaneous, as you know. For best results in the beginning, make a projection attempt when you feel slightly drowsy, but pleasantly so. When you have induced the trance state, then begin to examine your own subjective feelings until you find recognition of the inner self.

This involves a recognition of yourself as distinct from the flesh fibers in which you reside. Then, begin to imagine this inner self rising upward. You should experience at this point an internal sense of motion. This motion may be from side to side as you gently shake yourself loose.

All through this period I was trying to train myself to come “awake” while asleep. It serves no purpose to include all of the many dreams of this nature that I recorded — dreams in which I managed to regain my critical senses, sometimes only to fall back into normal dreaming and sometimes to embark upon conscious experiments. But one experience in particular was very vivid and informative. Excerpts from the following session will show you what I was trying to do.

In awake-seeming dreams you are indeed awake, but within a different psychological framework, indeed, within a different framework of reality. You are operating at a high level of awareness, and using the inner senses. These enable you to perceive an added depth of dimension which is responsible for the vividness and sense of exhilaration that often occurs within the kind of dream. The next step, of course, is to allow the ego to awaken its critical faculties while within this state. You are then able to realize that while you are indeed awake as you seem, you are awake while the body is asleep.

When this occurs, you will be able to use your normal abilities in addition to those of the dream condition. You will be certain of your identity, realize that the physical self is sleeping or in a dream state and that the inner self is fully awake. This represents a definite increase in the scope of consciousness and a considerable expansion over the usual limitations set by you upon yourself.

The projected form does make some impression upon the physical system. It is possible for it to be detected. It is a kind of pseudo-image, materialistically speaking, but it has definite electromagnetic reality and chemical properties. Animals have sensed such apparitions. They react to the chemical properties and build up to the [perception of] the image from these.

These chemical properties are more diffused in such an apparition than in a physical form, however. The chemical composition of a storm, perhaps, will give you an idea of what I mean. … They cause small disturbances in the physical system. As a rule, they are not solid, in the same way that clouds are not solid, and yet they have shape and to a certain extent, boundaries and movement. They definitely have a reality, though you cannot usually perceive it with the physical senses.

I’m convinced that I left my body when I decided to go into the living room, and met Miss C. who was traveling in her dream body, wandering about in her old surroundings and coming in for help as she used to do. Unfortunately, my critical sense was fully awakened only toward the end of the experience, though I made several valiant efforts to understand my condition.

You must want to do this, however. Often, you do not want to see the body by itself, so to speak, and so choose methods that make this more difficult. Just this one exercise will sharpen your control greatly. It is an ABC. This experience is also less startling to the ego than a more abrupt projection, and the ordinary nature of the activities — walking into the next room, for example — will be reassuring. You are more calm in your own surroundings. Of course, Ruburt was out of his body when he saw Miss Cunningham, who was in the same condition.

About two days later I met her downtown, the first time I’d seen her since her move. My first book was already out, and she knew about my work, so I told her of the projection and asked if the room meant anything to her at all. Her eyes widened as she told me that I’d described an inner room in her new house perfectly, down to the bare bulb in the ceiling and the paneling. The room was really far too large for a closet, though small enough for a normal room. She hadn’t known what to use it for, and so she’d finally turned it into a closet.

On another occasion, I gave myself suggestions that during the night, I would project to Peg and Bill Gallagher’s house. When morning came, I remembered nothing except that I had tried to get there, drifted off in the general area, then lost proper control of my consciousness. A few days later Peg called me with a strange story. A newspaper man, a colleague of hers, told Peg that, though he didn’t know me at all, he awakened in the middle of the night convinced that I was in his room. My name kept coming to him over and over, and he sensed my presence. The man has no interest in psychic matters, and told Peg because he knew she was a friend of mine. His experience happened the same night that I tried to get to Gallaghers — and he lives in the same area.

Projections involve many more aspects of the whole self and are a mark that the personality is progressing in important ways. The inner senses are allowed their greatest freedom in projection states, and the self retains experience that it would not otherwise. When this knowledge becomes a part of the ordinary waking consciousness, then you have taken a gigantic step forward.

An almost automatic determination must be established, however, if conscious projections are to be anything but rare oddities. With the both of you, the problem is somewhat different than it might be with some others. These chemical excesses are used up, for one things, in your own creative work. You do this automatically. It goes without saying that your own work will gain immeasurably through the extended experience of projection. The yoga exercises allow you to draw an abundance — indeed, a super-abundance — of energy. This energy results, also, in chemical excesses that can be utilized in projections, without drawing energy away from your other work.