“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The session was held in our back room, and was a quiet one. Jane began speaking while sitting down and with her eyes closed. Her voice was average. Her pace was slow at the beginning but soon picked up speed. She began speaking at 9:01.)

Dreams are an example of mental activity that has its origin within the physical organism, but exists in a dimension which is not mainly physical. Dreams are an example of the inner self’s basically independent nature.

The eye movements noted in the beginning of REM sleep are only indications of dream activity that is closely connected to the physical layers of the self. These periods mark not the onset of dreams, but the return of the personality from deeper layers of dream awareness to more surface areas.

The chemical excesses built up in the waking state are automatically changed as they are drained off, into electrical energy, which also helps to form and sustain dream images. Your scientists would learn more about the nature of dreams if they would but train themselves to recall their own dreams, and then study them in relation to their own normal activities and physical events.

For the investigator himself, through his actions, inadvertently brings about, in specific instances, those results for which he looks. The particular experiment may then seem to suggest conditions which are by no means general ones, but which may appear so. In hypnosis the subject is not as much on guard as a subject of an experiment when the subject knows in advance that he will be awakened by the experimenter, when electrodes are attached to the physical organism, when the conditions of the sleep laboratory are substituted for his ordinary nightly environment. It is impossible to study dreams when an attempt is made to isolate the dreamer from his own personality, to treat dreams as if they were physical or mechanical. The only laboratory for a study of dreams is the laboratory of the personality.

(It was 10:06. Jane settled herself in her rocker. Her eyes were closed, her head down, a hand to her face. Her voice was quiet and remained so. She used pauses but they were usually brief.)

The color purple. (Pause.) Something rather neutral, rather than of intimate personal nature. Something partially blank, dots, an assemblage of something, it seems of shadowy form. But vertical and perhaps cone shaped.

Not a photograph. Some kind of lettering (pause) and design. Joseph’s initials have to do with it, but it is not an object with which he has great personal concern; though there may be a wallet connection, I doubt it.

Perhaps something to do with neighbors indirectly. Mostly design, but with bare portions, and originals rather than exact duplicates. (Pause.) A fencelike shape.

(See the tracing of the test photo on page 295. Jane felt the test data contained but few correct impressions. She said the color purple could apply to the brick facing depicted in the photograph. Jane remembered this quite well even though the photo was taken some years ago. Our dog sits before the Bronx, NY, house of Jane’s aunt; Jane said she well remembers the peculiar blue and red cast of the bricks. I saw the house once some years ago but have no conscious memory of the brick color.

I cannot repeat this too strongly. He should dismiss the tests entirely from his mind. The tests in the sessions have not bothered him at all to any important degree, except for a natural initial nervousness, and all in all we have been coming along well enough. But at this stage he simply should leave the grading and so forth to you. Of course he may make suggestions as he reads the sessions, but that is all.

(She had worked out a two-column system that seemed rather good to us, but neither of us had realized the very intense effort involved would be detrimental. Since Jane’s idea would involve listing the material in such a fashion twice a week, and thus keep her involved, we decided to drop the idea, at least for the moment.

(I had planned to ask Seth a few questions at the end of the session. I now realized that Jane was tired, but decided to see what developed. For material connected with the first question, see my notes on Lorraine Shafer, York Beach, and Dr. Instream on pages 289-90, preceding the 193rd session.