“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

He has worked with human beings and cats. The very attempt to deprive an individual of sleep, however, will automatically set into mechanism subconscious dream activity. The tampering will then change the conditions. The direct experience of the developing dream is what they should be concerned with.

This could be studied to some degree if proper suggestions were given to the individual that he would awaken at the exact point when a dream ends. The dream state and dream conditions could also be studied quite legitimately, and to more purpose, using hypnosis. Here you are working with the mind itself as your material, and merely suggesting that it operate in a certain fashion. You are not tampering with the mechanics of its operation, and therefore automatically altering the conditions.

This however would involve many a nightly vigil. A better procedure would be to hypnotize a subject, and you would need a good one, and suggest that under hypnosis he repeat the dreams of the night before. There are many opportunities for an investigation of dreams along these lines, and the results would yield more legitimate information.

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.

I believe that he has left some people, and is alone in what would appear to be some sort of alleyway, perhaps between high buildings, fairly dark with lights nearby.

(Pause at 10:09.) Impressions again, perhaps a round object in his hand. He thinks of papers on a desk, or in a briefcase, that seem to have to do with a particular plan.

Something with checks, perhaps a jacket. And a package which he has received today, or will receive shortly, tomorrow. (Pause.)

I believe he has been irritated by a particular person, a male. I do not know... There is a connection, something to do with lights. Perhaps in connection with the man. Does he perhaps live on Light Street? Or his name (Jane gestured, her eyes still closed) Light Man—Lightman, or something of that sort. (Pause.)

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.

Now in regard to our own test this evening: Ruburt, at this stage, should not work on our own test results as he has been doing. He has been concentrating too much on grading our tests.

He has worked at this several hours daily. This is not his job, and it will work against our results. His job is to remain as spontaneous as possible. His work in attempting to tabulize the test results thus far, will only hamper our results. He should be in no way connected with that endeavor.

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.