“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

I had a long series of projections in which I talked to Sean [Sue’s son] about his health in the physical environment, and suggest that he will find health easy to maintain. In the last projection, I found myself hovering over a long row of shopping-center-like stores. There was a large grocery store near me and a drugstore somewhere beyond. Suddenly the entire grocery store exploded into flames. I could clearly hear explosions in the building. The windows blew out and the color of the flames was fantastic.

As we were going to bed, I began to feel a tremendous energy in the room. I tried not to be frightened and told myself that the intuitive self sensed something exciting going on, even if the ego was worried. I closed my eyes and the energy became stronger. Then I fell asleep and ‘woke up’ to find myself projecting in the dark-yet-not-dark of many projections. Seth stood in the doorway, looking as he does in Rob’s painting of him. He was short, rather stout, dressed in light shirt and pants. I realized that he took this form because it is reassuring to me.

He said that he was here to take Carl and me on our second trip. He promised three some time ago, and we’d been on one. I turned and looked at Carl’s sleeping body. Then I shouted at him until he began to project, grabbed his astral arm and helped him to his feet. Seth stood smiling, then gestured and we followed him. He gave us a lecture that I swore to remember. When I came to, it was dawn. The lecture had been so real that I was certain I’d remember it. Of course I didn’t. From now on, I will hereby install a pen point in the end of my nose and sleep with my head on a writing table.

Just last week, in a five- to ten-minute period, Rob had an excellent out-of-body with very little distortion. His abilities have developed along the lines of psychic-vision, as explained in The Seth Material. His projections have been infrequent, and he never gained conscious awareness of any from the sleep state until this one. “How can I tell if I do have a legitimate projection from sleep? How will I know its not a dream or hallucination?” he used to ask. After this experience he told me that the subjective feeling is its own proof — and of course, it is.

The incident happened on a class night. Rob had been working in his studio and gone to bed around 11:00 P.M. He was vaguely aware of class leaving (at 12:30).

Before he went back to sleep, Rob told me what had happened. I was amazed, because I hadn’t been in bed over five minutes yet. I’d been waiting for his snoring to quiet down or hopefully, stop. When it didn’t, I asked him to turn over. The bathroom light had been off only ten minutes at the most and the bathroom door closed. Except for undressing, these were the last two things I did before going to bed. A humorous domestic quandary results. Now I’ll have to think twice before asking Rob to turn over if he’s snoring. I’ll be afraid of disturbing a projection.

Congratulations, he said.

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.

In this case, I think that Rob projected to the studio, and hallucinated the rest of the events or performed them in the astral body. Had he been more critical at the time, he could have caused the hallucinations to disappear, continued with them or left the apartment.

I lay down to experiment and fell asleep at once to have a confused experience, mixed with dream elements. I found myself getting out of my body with some difficulty, only I was someone else or in someone else’s body, a young woman student. I went running out of a house into a landscaped yard, sat down, left that body and went strolling through the yard. Other people were there, and I was jubilant because no one saw me. A young man stood by the steps. I finally said, ‘I’m out of my body. Can you see me? Can you?’ He said that he could, and didn’t seem at all impressed, so I went back into the other body again. I started to wake up and realized that some kind of a projection had been involved, though I wasn’t sure how much was contaminated by dream elements. I decided to let myself fall back into a doze to see what else developed and to monitor my consciousness.

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.

As I was entering my body, I heard Rob in the bathroom. I wondered if he would come in to see what I was doing. This awakened my physical body.

First I found myself in the studio and Rob was there. He came to bed with me, and we made love. I was surprised he was home, knowing it was Friday when he was out of his body also, and so was I. I told Rob and we discussed it, plus our amazement over out-of-body love-making. Then, laughing and curious, we walked out into the living room together, looking at everything. The room and the morning were all normal. We hugged and joked — the bodies we had certainly seemed real to us. Yet to others we’d be invisible.

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.

“No,” Rob said. “My physical body’s at the art department.” With that, he simply disappeared. I found myself back in the bedroom. I left the apartment and had two very long adventures in the astral condition, all clear and vivid, and recorded in my notes.

Ruburt was writing earlier in the morning, and, without realizing it, he was telepathically aware of your emotional presence. It was this that gave him the idea of a projection experiment. He wanted to see if he could become more aware of your form. You did not want to project per se, necessarily. You wanted to be here to offer comfort. The desire got you here. Your conscious mind was fully taken up with your activities at the art department, giving the inner self full rein.

For your own purposes, an unfinished painting on your easel would help you project to the studio, for you would wish to study it. You have often done this, without remembering. It would be to your advantage if the two of you traveled together, however. You could help each other retain proper consciousness and purpose during projection. If Ruburt is projecting, he should try to rouse you astrally.

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.

Now, there are ‘objective’ realities that exist within the astral system. There are more than your own thought forms, in other words. Your own thought-forms can be definite aids when you are in the proper mental condition, and they can impede your progress if you are not. For example, a man in a desperate frame of mind is more apt to emphasize the unpleasant aspects of the news and to see bitterness rather than the joy in the faces of those he meets. He will ignore a contented child playing on one side of the street and notice, instead, a dirty ragged child, even though he be further away. So your frame of mind when projecting will largely determine the kind of experiences you have.

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.