“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Dictation: There are also various states of consciousness in waking life, upon which you do not focus, and of which you are usually quite unaware. Each state knows its own conditions and is familiar with a different kind of reality.

On occasion even in waking life a personality may spontaneously shift gears, so to speak, and suddenly find itself for a second or perhaps a few moments within another such realm. Disorientation usually occurs. There are those who do this quite deliberately with training, but often they do not realize that they are interpreting the experiences they have with the values of their “home” consciousness.

Divorced from physical focus, you are in a better position to hear the Speakers, to translate their instructions, to practice with the creation of images, and to be guided in the methods of maintaining the health of the physical body. In the most protected areas of sleep, the apparent barriers between many layers of reality vanish. You are aware, for example, of some probable realities. You choose which probable acts you want to actualize in your system. You follow other probable acts through in the dream state. You do this individually, but you also do it en masse on national and global levels.

The precise stages are present beneath waking awareness, however, and with the same chemical, electromagnetic, and hormonal fluctuations. You simply are not aware of what your consciousness is doing. You cannot yourselves keep track of it for five full moments of your time. The dimensions of it can only be sensed by those determined enough to take the time and effort required to journey through their own subjective realities. Yet intuitively each individual knows that a part of his experience escapes from him all the time. When you suddenly cannot remember a name that you should know, you have in essence the same kind of feeling of which you are always subconsciously aware.

(10:11. Jane’s trance had been good. Her delivery tonight, without voice effects, with only short pauses and a minimum of gestures, was the kind that seemingly could continue indefinitely. At break I asked if Seth would title the first eight chapters of his book, as he began doing from Chapter Nine on. Resume in the same manner at 10:26.)

Now: These stages of consciousness are all a part of your own reality. A knowledge of them can be most useful. You can learn to “shift gears,” stand aside from your own experience, and examine it with much better perspective. You can prepare questions or problems, suggesting that they be solved for you in the sleep state. You can suggest that you will speak with distant friends, or convey important messages that you cannot convey verbally, perhaps. You can bring about reconciliations, for example, at another layer of reality though you cannot do so in this one.

Now unconsciously you do many of these things. You often go back in time, so to speak, and “relive” a particular event so that it has a different ending, or say things that you wish you had said. A knowledge of one state of consciousness can help you in other states. In a light trance the meaning of dream symbols will be given if you ask for them. The symbols may then be used as methods of suggestion that will be tailored for you personally. If you discover, say, that a fountain in a dream represents refreshment, then when you are tired or depressed, think of a fountain. In another layer of reality, of course, you will be creating one.

(Pause.) Do not worry about the [first eight] chapter headings — we will get to them. We will end the session or answer any questions if you prefer.

(“I do.” End at 10:45 P.M.)