“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

On several occasions Sue found herself in an out-of-body state, explaining the facts of death to the newly dead who did not realize their condition. Obviously, such experiences cannot be proven in scientific terms. I’ve had several such “dreams,” and I know that they are completely different from ordinary ones. For one thing, the critical abilities are functioning and in normal dreams they are not. Like mine, Sue’s records are full of notes concerning the effort needed to maintain consciousness at the required level and to prevent falling off into a regular dream state.

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.

I was particularly aware of my lower astral legs, hovering above the physical ones, and took great pleasure in wiggling them about, enjoying the marvelous sense of freedom and lightness they possessed. I knew my physical legs couldn’t move this freely, although they are in good condition. My astral legs felt rubbery, so loose and flexible! I could see that they were light-colored, translucent from the knees down — this without my sitting up in my astral form to see them.

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.

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.

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.

Then I realized that I was in an excellent state for experimentation, fully alert and awake, and still in my body which was asleep. This time I decided to try and get up astrally, just walk around the room and observe the various stages of activity. I tried cautiously at first, afraid that I might rouse the physical muscles instead. The second time I succeeded, getting used to the fine distinction between moving the astral body up while leaving the physical one alone. This took quite a bit of concentration. I finally stood up, wobbly, and somewhat groggy with the effort.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We didn’t go to Saratoga physically until the summer of 1970, when we drove through on our way north. When we were there, I had Rob drive around to Linden’s. The house was exactly like it had been in my experience, with the side porch removed and a front one added.

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.

If you do this from a dream state, then you must set aside two and one half hours, for the first portion will be used as preliminaries. You can also give yourselves such suggestions before you sleep. You might begin by making an appointment to meet each other, say, at three in the morning in the living room.

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.

I often dream of giving a Seth session for one of my students, and in almost each case, the individual involved records the same kind of dream for that night. This has happened in Sue’s case five or six times.