“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(At 8:50 a friend of ours, Howard Kimball, arrived. He is on the board of directors of the gallery, which Jane has just left. Howard wanted to look at some paintings, and of course some conversation ensued involving the new director at the gallery, who was discussed by Seth in the 74th session.

(Howard bought a small tempera of mine picturing two apples; and then to Jane’s surprise he bought off the wall of our apartment a small abstract oil that Jane and I had produced jointly, in a humorous attempt at working together. The little painting had turned out well and attracted much notice. It was the first piece of art work Jane had ever sold, and she was pleased.

I hope that you will not find that he is now bigheaded, as well as pigheaded. He knows I speak only in jest. I did nevertheless tell you that he had been an artist at one time, did I not?

The interruption did bother him somewhat, as he was prepared for a session on time, per usual. I will however continue along the lines of our previous discussions.

Now. The conscious self responds without knowing it, often changing course and direction, to these dreams of which he is often not aware. The ego, the conscious ego, the so-called conscious self, is only the front man in the front lines, supported by multitudinous areas or portions of himself that he does not know, and whose messages come to him only through the correspondence of dreams.

I am, again, not minimizing the practical necessity for the conscious self as it appears to be. But man is much more than the conscious self, and what he calls the conscious self is merely the whole self as seen through the direction in which the whole self chooses to direct its energies and focus.

A man stands in the center of a room. When he looks to the right you say “This is my conscious self.” When he looks to the left, we have something else again. You say “This is the dreaming self.” The dreaming self, or if you will, the left-handed self, indeed is as important as the so-called conscious self. The whole self merely changes direction and viewpoint, and focuses its energies along a particular line.

Our friend Ruburt prides himself that his conscious self, before the sessions began, started a book called The Physical Universe as Idea Construction. Ha ha, did he really now?

The idea that sparked the book came to him, though he may forget, in two ways. First as intuition; in other words from his inner self as he sat down to write poetry, and in a dream the following night.

Intellectually he followed the ideas, but his inner self gave him the all-important initial message. His poetry does not spring from the conscious self, yet he would not disinherit it for that reason. Intuition represents the directions of the inner self, breaking through conscious barriers.

The dreaming self, dear friends, is not aware of the conscious self. The whole self, the entire inner self alone, holds knowledge of the direction in which it moves. The directions can be likened to conscious selves. Any individual on the physical level who has achieved great things has done so because his so-called conscious self was intuitively (and underline the word intuitively) aware of the selves of which he could not be consciously aware.

Ruburt knew he could look better if he spent half the time and effort, but was jealous anyway. So here the symbols coincided. He obtained subconscious information concerning your past life, the one symbol of the tub serving three purposes. It gave him information, it helped overcome his jealousy, and it was a transition from surface significance to deeper knowledge.

I will then wish you both a fond good evening, with the remark that Ruburt will make more this year through writing than he would have at the gallery. And if your poor Professor Von Jamesson appears at your door, do not be surprised. Be very kind and considerate, and say no to anything he may suggest.

(Then Bill and Jane were gone. I was in the living room of the apartment with Alice and Clark, looking back toward a kitchen finished in brown wood paneling. In an intermediate room I saw Larry Potter. He was wearing a chamois-type fall jacket with knitted cuffs. He seemed to me to be taller and heavier than I had known him to be, which was about my own size. The amazing thing to me was that Larry was frantically busy at a wringer-type washing machine that was gushing forth a stream of water from its outlet, into a bucket that was almost full.

(Glaring at me, Larry shouted at me to get him a pie pan, that the washer was going to overflow the bucket any second. I yelled back that a pie pan wouldn’t hold much. The machine was jumping around while Larry held it down. I don’t recall any water on the floor. The next I knew, Larry was very angry with me; he stood right beside me and towered over me, yelling something about me being some kind of nut or dope, and that I needed a good punch.

(Then my brother Dick, looking perhaps a little younger than he is now [about 36], was approaching me, smiling down at me and saying something to me. He was fully dressed, wearing a jacket. Dick was accompanied by a thin, sharp-faced man in dark-rimmed glasses, neatly dressed in a dark suit and white shirt and colored tie, and a slim rather good-looking woman I did not know. This couple with Dick did not speak to me, as I recall.

(Next, Jane and I had been attending a party in a building on a busy downtown street corner, on the second floor. I did not actually see Jane but knew she was there at the party. Many people were about. I entered this part of the dream as I left the stairway to move out on the corner for a breath of fresh air. I was now dressed, and it was daytime. As I stood on the corner with people passing me in all directions, I stretched my arms high above my head. Then to my surprise I saw my father ride past me, past the corner, on a bicycle. Father was wearing a familiar brown hat, and a long brown topcoat, incongruously enough, and he was his present age. His face was very smooth-looking and pink-cheeked, looking very healthy, and he seemed to pedal past me quite easily, as a youth would do.

(I was very surprised to see Father. As he passed me he turned his head to look back at me over his left shoulder, smiling serenely all the while. Caught by surprise with my arms up in the air, I quickly lowered my left arm somewhat, holding it stiff, and waved at Father with my hand revolving at the wrist. I did not bend my arm but waved at him awkwardly with it held stiff so that only my hand moved. Father did not speak a word to me, nor did I speak to him or call after him. He kept on pedaling, seemingly up a slight incline just beyond the intersection. This was the end of the dream, and it made quite an impression upon me.