“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

There are some matters that I said we would discuss, concerning experiments in recording dreams via your recorder, using suggestion to awaken you after a dream sequence. I also told you that we would discuss some implications arising from the fact that Philip was able to hear my voice, and we shall not overlook these matters.

The dream will be fresh. If your recorder is suitably situated with the microphone easily at hand, then you can speak your dream with less effort than is required to write it down. Of course records should be kept. The simplest part of the experiment will involve the use of self-suggestion in dream recall.

Unknown characters within the dream action, persons unknown to you in everyday life, should be given careful attention also, and the roles which they play within the dream drama. The primary colors of a dream should be noted. It certainly goes without saying that all remembered dream events should be checked against reality, as you have been doing, so that any clairvoyant dreams are clearly checked and recorded.

This is all right, and the effect will be minimized when the newness has worn off. Again, if preferable we want to record the dreams in the sequence in which they occur, so that the self-suggestion should always include “I will recall the first three dreams,” or the first five dreams or whatever number you arbitrarily chose to begin.

You may try two different wordings for a start, and now I am speaking of the precise wording. The first: “I will wake up after each of my first five dreams, and record each one immediately.”

Now the second alternative wording would be the same as the one I have just given you, but the “wake up” could be omitted. That is, it is possible you see, for you to record these dreams, speaking into the microphone without awakening, in your terms.

This is definitely not only possible but certainly the most convenient. You should however try both methods, and discover which works the best for you. By all means, if at all possible, the recorder, Joseph, should be in your bedroom. It is the immediate dream recall we are after. We want you to record the dream at the instant of awakening, or at the instant that the dream is about to dissolve.

The time involved in going from one room to another could result in the loss of dream content and vividness. The very motor responses demanded on the part of the body, and the extra arousal tendency, would force you to lose a great deal of valid material. I would much rather that you work less, if necessary, using the recorder in the bedroom, than work more intensively leaving the recorder in another room.

For it is the dream we are after, the dream experience itself in all the vividness that we can capture, and if you are going to get a watered-down version in any case, then you might as well continue with your present method of dream recording, and not lose any sleep.

You will experience the vivid realization of your own dreams in this manner, and with some training you will record as much of the whole dream experience as any investigators manage to record when the training is done by a mechanical device, or another individual. And you will also be gaining, additionally, excellent discipline and training over your own states of consciousness, and this in itself you see will be an important yardstick of progress for you both.