“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

While I’m writing this book in the three-dimensional world, for example, the source material for it comes from the other side of consciousness — that dimension that is revealed to us in dreams, inspiration, trance states and creativity. This book is about Seth, dreams and “astral projection” — all aspects of a different kind of consciousness than the objective one with which we are usually occupied.

I don’t “become” Seth. Instead, I seem to bask in what he is, or in his presence, if you prefer. Sometimes I am distantly aware that my facial muscles are being rearranged as they mirror Seth’s emotions rather than mine. But then, for me, the reality of the room vanishes. Though my eyes are wide open, it is Seth who looks out and smiles at Rob; Seth who speaks through my lips, discussing the nature of reality and existence from the viewpoint of someone not confined to the three-dimensional world.

Fortunately or unfortunately, however, I suspect that our relationship is far more complex. One thing I know: Seth does not have his present basic existence in the three-dimensional world, and I do. He has given us instructions that allow Rob, my students and myself to take our own sometimes faltering steps out of our usual physical reality. He initiated our exploration into the universe of dreams, for example, and is therefore largely responsible for this book. But we must return to our normal daily dimension of actuality. And Seth returns to his.

My out-of-body experiences are not nearly as well directed, deliberate or effective as Seth’s behavior is here, for example. Seth dictates one final draft of his own book, while I do at least three drafts of my own. (This present book is my third since the sessions began, so Seth is hardly “stealing” any of my creative energy.)

According to Seth, dreaming is a creative state of consciousness, a threshold of psychic activity in which we throw off usual restrictions to use our most basic abilities and realize our true independence from three-dimensional form. In dreams, Seth says, we write the script for our daily lives and perceive other levels of existence that our physical focus usually obscures.

The water analogy intrigues me, though it can’t be followed too far without leading to distortions. A scuba diver, for instance, explores what he finds on the ocean floor and brings us clues from this vast, submerged area. I try to do the same thing, salvaging instead clues from the hidden layers of our inner being. But if he goes far enough, the scuba diver must somewhere come to the bottom of the ocean, and I don’t believe there is any bottom or boundary to this inner reality. Instead, I suspect that there are even stranger chasms and openings into other worlds of whose existence we are quite unaware — pools of creativity, consciousness and experience, from which not only our three-dimensional reality but also others spring.