“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(After supper Jane had read the two dreams quoted previously involving my father. My dream notebook lay open on the table. As session time approached Jane no longer felt nervous. I could tell however that she was somewhat tired, and when she began delivery I thought her voice had a peculiar, flat, expressionless quality that could be the result of fatigue. She spoke very deliberately, in measured phrases, in a voice somewhat lower than usual, but not loudly, and as though she were giving a lecture before a number of people. Again her glasses were off, her eyes very dark. Her pacing was also quite slow.)

Hypnosis is one method of examining dreams. Our method is perhaps the best one. The inner self constantly changes its focus. I have said that consciousness is merely the direction in which the inner self focuses at any particular time. In order to examine the reality of dreams it is necessary to change the focus of the inner self to those directions in which the inner self moves, when the ego does not limit its scope to camouflage reality only.

(I was somewhat concerned because once again she said that she was tired, and I felt her voice revealed her fatigue rather plainly. We discussed various alternatives, finally deciding that Jane would sleep for at least half an hour before a session whether witnesses were due or not, and whether they were present or not. We also talked of moving the beginning time ahead an hour to 8 PM, at least during the winter months when it gets dark early.

(I would like to remind the reader here that when Seth uses the term “area,” he means what up until recently he has called a “level” of the subconscious. Actually, he states, the subconscious is not neatly divided into levels, but is marvelously intertwined, like a labyrinth. Seth has mentioned this at various times.

(True. See page 48. At this moment, there also popped to mind the fact that I have a collection of perhaps 30 books on old sailing ships, the sea, pirates, etc. I had not looked at them recently, indeed having begun the collection over ten years ago, before I was married, when I became interested in the subject while doing research for some artwork. But ever since I built up the collection, I’ve insisted on carting it about with us each time we changed location.)

You found out later and felt somewhat at fault. In the dream the lad’s present mother is seen to comfort you, this being a way to relieve the past uneasiness that at a certain subconscious area still lingers. At the time the lad was in his very early thirties, but you were much younger.

You stretch, a symbol of the relatively sleepy, unrealized period of youth, early youth, in which you were caught, hence the stiffish arm that was not able therefore to keep the man who is your father with you in time. He smiles and nods, yet you do not speak because communication between you was always difficult.

You will find such sequences often, and this should be expected. The dream also allowed you to see ahead of time beyond the surface of the situation which did arrive on Sunday, and you were much easier on your father Sunday because the dream tipped you off as to the tactics that your mother would use on one level, and also allowed you to punish yourself and your father symbolically rather than actually, for a violent tendency which is now apparent in him toward her, but is not as readily apparent, but repressed, in yourself.

(Break at 10:50. Jane was fully dissociated, so far-out, she said, that she had no conception of the passage of time, whether five minutes or two hours passed. Actually we had missed two breaks. Toward the end Jane’s voice had become quite dry and hoarse, and I had been on the point of asking for a break when Seth did take one.

(Actually, I had been well aware that Seth was skipping breaks, and had watched Jane rather closely to see if she became uncomfortable. This was her longest uninterrupted delivery by far since the sessions began last November 1963, and she appeared to go through it without any visible change in manner beyond the quite natural hoarseness toward the end. As for myself, I can state that by the time break arrived my right hand and arm ached all the way up to my shoulder.

(End at 10:55. Jane was dissociated as usual. She said that while she was delivering the above material on one level, she also received the thought from Seth “on another level” that she should sleep for three-quarters of an hour after supper on session nights. She has reported this dual reception on a few occasions before, and as before she said she was able to give voice to but one level at a time.

(Thinking the session now over, I then brought up the thought that I suspected a distortion in Seth’s interpretation of the first dream, where he stated that before being born I saw my brother Loren as a woman. I thought I recalled Seth stating many sessions ago that Loren had been three times a man, but never a woman, and had a woman’s life ahead of him.