“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now, like then, we close the living room door so we won’t hear the phone or be interrupted by visitors. Rob moves my favorite rocker in. We usually take some wine. So from nine until nearly midnight, there we are — humble listeners. Of course, its also possible that we’re picking up, hearing and transcribing only cosmic noise. I doubt it, but even then I’d rather spend my life in the quest for meaning, the search for learning, rather than ignore the messages and signals that have appeared within our world. And I do believe that we are in contact with a source quite beyond our normal comprehension.

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.

There are some notes I wanted to give you concerning dreams in which you feel certain you are normally awake. When these dreams are unusually vivid, then the ego is aware and participating, but generally it is not using its critical faculties. As you know, you can become critically alert, but when you do so, you realize that you are not in your normal waking condition.

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 room was dark, normal in every way, lit to some degree by the streetlights outside. At first I thought that Miss C. was sleepwalking and was worried about awakening her. Something else confused me. I heard very dim jazz music and couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Miss C. was hardly the type to carry a small transistor radio in her robe pocket.

This is a pleasant and easy method. With some experience you will discover that you can maintain control, walk out of the apartment and outside. You may then attempt normal locomotion or levitate. There is little strain with this method. Keep it in mind so that you are alert to the initial favorable circumstances. You may be half awake. You may be in a false awakening. The method will work in either case. You can, if you want to, look back at your body.

During this time, I was experimenting with waking projections also. The idea behind those was different: I wanted to go someplace in an out-of-body state, record my impressions of what I saw, and check the results in whatever way I could. With the dream projections, I was more intrigued by the manipulations of consciousness involved (the trick of staying between hallucinations and physical reality) and the methods. These tell far more about how consciousness works, and I was always intrigued by trying to continue normal awareness throughout dreaming.

That’s all that I remembered. I must have fallen back into a normal dream state, and when I awakened, it was morning. I wrote down what I had seen, dated the record as usual, told Rob and wondered about calling Beverly to check. She was only an acquaintance, however; we had never been close. So I let it rest.

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.

This same chemical reaction must also occur, only more strongly, before a legitimate projection can occur. This is one of the main reasons why deliberate projections are not more numerous. Usually the chemical access is used in normal dreaming. In periods of exuberant energy and well being, a more than normal excess accumulates. This can trigger a projection. In periods of momentary indisposition, however, the dreaming process may be blocked and the chemical excess accumulated. Again, a good time to try projection.

After projection is accomplished, however, there is a marked decline in chemical activity and hormone action, a drop in body temperature and a drop in blood pressure. The rapid eye movements noted by dream investigators cease entirely. The eye muscles are not used. The normal muscular activity that usually occurs in sleep vanishes. The physical body is in a deep trance state. The trance may also be masked by sleep, if the projection happens from a dream threshold.

In other words, there is indeed a connection that is and must be partially physical, between the body and the traveling consciousness, and it is based upon a certain sugar molecule in a form not normally seen. Before conscious projections I would therefore recommend that you take a small amount of starchy or sugar food. A small snack before bed is a good idea from this viewpoint. Alcohol is of some benefit, though not to any great degree. Excellent results can be achieved in a dream-based projection during the day, in a nap.