“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 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.

All this time Jane was beside me in bed. I was also snoring. I could hear the snoring clearly and was amazed at the loudness of the sounds my body made. I heard the sounds in my physical head, I believe, just beneath me. Now I conceived the idea of using the sound of my snoring as an impetus to leave my body on the bed, while I went soaring off.

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.

I don’t know if I would have succeeded in getting further or not because now Jane said to me, ‘Hon, you’re snoring. Turn over.’ I heard her very clearly. … That ended it. I had no further success, although the pleasant aura surrounding the episode lingered. The whole time I felt that so much was possible with the state, that just beyond my ability at this moment lay wonderful accomplishments. … At no time did I see the astral cord.

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.

I worked at my drawing table. The light was on, and the windows dark. It was clearly nighttime. After a moment I realized that I wasn’t supposed to be in the studio, that I had just gone to bed and should be in the living room. As soon as I made this connection, I snapped back to my body. Jane was beside me, so she had just come to bed. I knew I had not been dreaming and felt a most peculiar sense of suspension and ease.

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.

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.

All the while, I was very conscious of the white light that was beginning to bother me. It seemed to fill my entire head, growing more and more intense. A funny whooshing sound inside my head also distracted me and my head itself began to feel fantastically light. The more I tried to concentrate in my environment, the stronger these effects grew.

It occurred to me that perhaps the effects were warnings to go back to my body or indications that conditions weren’t good. At the same time, there was no way I could check out the projection physically — I’d met no one — and I decided that since I was over 250 miles away from my body, I may as well get whatever evidence I could for myself.

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.

Finally I looked up and saw my mother in front of me. She was lying in bed, and I couldn’t tell if I was in her bedroom or seeing through the wall or what. I started thinking about what Jane said about people being out-of-body without knowing it and wondered if Mom was out right then. With this, she sat right up and pointed at me. This reminded me of the way that Seth points at people sometimes. Apparently this worried me, for I ran to my body for protection. After this I came awake in my body and wrote down my first out-of-body trip!

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.

I still couldn’t figure out what had really happened with Rob and me, though. Luckily, in the next, 481st session on May 12, 1969, Seth began an explanation. The session also contains further hints for dream projections.