“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The next thing I knew, I had the feeling that I was hovering in our dark bathroom. We close the door between the bath and living room to keep Willie, our cat, in the living room at night. I was before the closed door, but wasn’t able to penetrate it. I felt no fear or panic. Although I was awake while sleeping and definitely projecting, I didn’t realize this at first. The fact slowly dawned on me. This was the first time that the fear element wasn’t present for me. I had no actual memory of leaving my body, and I must have fallen off into normal sleep for a moment, because the next thing I knew, I found myself out of my body, hovering just above my sleeping physical image.

I arrived at this idea after several conscious and deliberate attempts to ‘get going’ once again and leave my body behind. No success. I just remained where I was, hovering. Trying to use my own sounds I began to snore even louder, if possible. I wanted to build up a massive sound-impetus that I would somehow use to propel me. All this time I enjoyed the feeling of floating above my body, but even more, of using my physical body to make noise with. This must imply a kind of dual consciousness here, since I was aware of both bodies.

You began your attempts before Ruburt came to bed, but did not succeed until then. The time sense outside the body can be quite different than the body’s. You knew that one successful experience would free you, so you chose the best of circumstances. Remember, you have chosen those circumstances before, in the quick projection into the living room.

The snoring was supposed to be a signal to Ruburt. You knew he would ‘awaken’ you. This was its original motivation. If you did not like the experiment, you see, it would be terminated. In the meantime, you became delighted and decided upon using the noise as propellant, but Ruburt’s usual reaction to the snoring took place.

Rob has had several spontaneous projections but none experimentally produced. The one Seth mentioned happened several years ago, in wintertime. We slept in the living room for the night because the back of the apartment was chilly. Rob had just gone to bed on the opened-up couch. I puttered about, in the same room, ready to join him. All the lights were on. He closed his eyes. The next instant he found himself fully awake and conscious in his studio.

Experimentation requires constant vigilance and continual checking. The following experience of mine shows some of the issues involved, and can give some of you some hints as to how to proceed. I usually speed out of my body and away from this location very quickly. Left to myself, this seems to be my characteristic method. But this allows no walking around the room, no chance to study the actual departure with any clearness; it happens too quickly. So, many of my experiments include the attempt to leave my body slowly so I can study my behavior.

I was having trouble getting away from the couch and walking properly. All through this, I was afraid that my body might not be as deeply asleep as I’d earlier supposed, but all of my consciousness was with me in my astral form. My vision wasn’t clear, though, and the room looked hazy. I shook my head to clear it and saw to my dismay that the entire living room wall was lying flat on the floor, face up, closed door and all. This told me at once that I was hallucinating and if I didn’t watch it, I could fall into a dreaming state. (If I’d just accepted the wall’s position as ‘one of those things,’ I would have lost my critical awareness.) I decided that it might be better to go back into my body and try over.

By now, I was standing with my back to my body, and I just ‘fell’ backward into it. I got out again fairly quickly, this time able to study the strange sensing involved in distinguishing between the astral self I wanted to sit up and the physical self I wanted to stay flat. I walked out to the center of the room which now was perfectly normal, but had difficulty walking and remembered that in my case, at least, this sometimes happens when I’m close to my body. I decided to go to Rob’s studio, where he was working, to see if I could make him observe me.

Between the first episode and the second, I was fully alert, awake in my astral body, but still connected with the physical one. In this state I experienced what I can only call ecstasy, involving the entire body. While the feeling was not localized, it certainly felt strongly sexual in nature, and when I left my body, there was a moment when this continued very intensely.

Sue, my other students, and myself are aware that creative, psychic and sexual energy are only various aspects of the same force. At times we may collect this energy sexually, then switch over, transforming the energy from one form to another. The sexual feelings accompany many dream projections and are entirely absent in others. Their presence at all, however, may easily give rise to interpretations based more on social taboos than anything else — and to sexual hallucinations that should be but are not always recognized as such.

This experience happened September 27, 1967, after a social evening at home. I’d had several glasses of wine during the evening, and when I went to bed, I couldn’t get comfortable, but dozed and awakened often. I went to bed at 11:30 P.M. and recorded this experience at 1:30 A.M.

As I fell off to sleep I had been thinking of Congress Park in Saratoga Springs, New York. Suddenly, I became aware that I had begun a projection, but I wasn’t sure exactly how far the process had gone. I found myself seeing Congress Park very clearly, for example, yet I wasn’t there yet, and my head kept throbbing in a way that wasn’t physical — as if I heard rather than felt the throbs. This was accompanied by a buzzing noise and other loud sounds that I now accept as characteristic of certain kinds of projection. My head felt full of a white light. Everything in my astral visions was opaque white, instead of dark.

I decided to continue the projection though I hadn’t faced these particular conditions before — being half in and half out of an environment. Instantly, I found myself walking along the park path, sometimes slightly above it. The night was foggy and dark, as it was in Elmira. My sight was operating perfectly, but it took a while before my hearing worked. (In good projections, all senses are super-perfect). I worked at getting clearer focus and really enjoyed walking down the park paths. I hadn’t been in that park for years and was consciously delighted. Now and then I paused to see if anything had changed. So far everything was the same.

At the end of the park basin are a flight of stone steps leading to another street and an old house in which I once lived for a short time. I went there. The front downstairs door was ajar, but to see how well I was doing, I walked through the part that was closed and went upstairs. After wandering through the upstairs hall and seeing no one, I went out to the side porch and stood looking out at the park and enjoying the night air.

Ignoring the light, I willed myself to go to the house of the Linden family, across town. Instantly I found myself there on the porch. For a moment I wondered if I was in the right place, then I saw that the old side porch had been completely removed and another front porch added. Was this a distortion or hallucination? I willed all hallucinations to vanish, but everything remained the same. This usually means that the environment is a “real” location. It was dark, with no lights on in the house, and I decided to go inside.

I found myself then in my astral body above my physical one, but in reversed position. My astral hand with its strange sensations and pulsing light was to the south, over my physical feet. For a few moments I kept fluctuating — back to the park then back to my room — with the white light pulsating very strongly. Finally I just wished myself into my body, experienced some difficulty, a brief instant of unconsciousness, and fell back in.

It all started when I turned over to switch on the light next to the bed. It flashed a bright red color which I thought strange and unaccountable. I got up to go to the bathroom, but when I began to walk, I felt very dizzy. When I reached the door, I had the odd feeling that I’d left something behind me. When I looked back toward the body, I nearly flipped. I sure had left something — my body! Then I realized that I was in my astral form.

Then I remembered that on first going to bed, I’d felt that someone was in the room. Right then, Sue Mullin [later Carl’s wife] now appeared, out of thin air. When I saw her, I suggested that we both go to Jane’s house to let her know we were out-of-body, but Sue wanted to talk instead. We talked for some time, but now I can’t remember the conversation. I kept watching my body on the bed. It changed position, lying on its back. Before it had faced the window. I was particularly interested in the eyes. Either the shadow in the room was freaking me out or the eyes were wide open but blank. When I turned around to Sue again, she was gone.

Now I had trouble staying out of my body but found that by exhaling I could keep myself in the astral one. Once I went back in my body, got up and thought I did so physically and was in a normal state, but then I saw my body on the bed …

One of my most delightful dream encounters involved a meeting with Rob in the out-of-body state on May 9, 1969. I had a dentist’s appointment later in the day, but in the morning I lay down at 9:30, specifically to try a projection from the dream state. I dozed and awoke at 10:30, remembering nothing. Disappointed but determined, I set the alarm for 11:15 and tried again. Almost instantly I fell asleep.

This made me think of looking at my physical body. Rob’s, we knew, would be at work. I went into the bedroom, but the bed was as I left it, only empty. This really confused me. I called Rob. He couldn’t see my physical body either. “My body’s got to be in bed,” I said. “Why can’t we see it?” We discussed what had happened so far, but couldn’t solve the mystery. “Could it be that we’re really both physical after all?” I asked.

He can be of great help to you, when he develops further. You can also suggest dreams in which you are flying in an airplane and tell yourself then that you will waken from the dream and project. You will know the plane to be a dream image, but be able to retain it for your convenience if you want, so that you do not fear falling at first.

In such instances, you are withdrawing your perceptive abilities from the physical body. They will seem to operate as usual, but they are more vivid and far-reaching. Your thoughts instantly attain a form that you can then perceive. If you think of a dog, for example, quite unconsciously you form the image of a dog, which you then perceive.

Sue and I are positive that we have met many times during out-of-body states. Sometimes one of us remembers, sometimes the other does. On several instances, however, both of us have remembered and recorded our experiences which were similar but not identical. We hope to do much more work here. Rob is now becoming much more familiar with projection, so he and I plan to do some extensive work on our own. Hopefully, through the years, we can amass some kind of evidence that will be of help to others.