“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I finished typing the last half of Monday’s session just before the session tonight. I reminded Jane that I think it’s an excellent one, and that I want to type copies for us of the material between 9:15 and 9:36, wherein Seth explains that the intellect needs to realize that it doesn’t have to go it alone, that it is supported and aided by other portions of the self. I think this insight can help Jane greatly. I also told her I want to quote portions of Monday’s session in Seth’s current book, Dreams.

In your dream³ you were, of course, in the process of forming new ideas about the nature of the magical self (through my art) and also in your way working that idea out through imagery. The dream is above all an example of “work” being done at other levels of awareness.

Ruburt’s [recent] mental conversation with “Mary,”⁴ and your own dream about Mary with the sketchbook sheets⁵ — all of these experiences are indications of the exquisite kind of reasoning that goes on at the levels of awareness that are usually considered unreasonable. That kind of material enriches the intellect and reassures it.

(“I’d say that a great memory must be involved here, coupled on deeper levels with a shortening of time as we think of it. Seth’s abilities remind me of material I’ve written recently on how certain portions of the personality or psyche must very shrewdly and carefully construct dreams in advance, so that when the dreams are played back they render just the right message to the parts of the psyche that need it. I’m not being contradictory here when I write that the dream is a spontaneous production, also.

3. From my dream notebook: “Dream, very early Wednesday morning, August 13, 1980. (See my painting at the end of this session.)

“In vivid color, as usual: I dreamed that in New York City I had gone back to my first love, drawing comics. Not comic books, however, but a syndicated fantasy-adventure story to be run in color and take up a full Sunday newspaper page. Very unusual. I saw my art for the first page, perhaps half again as large as the printed version would be, lying on a flat drawing table. It was in black ‘line’, but also with flat washes of color. For comic books, I had drawn only the black plate. The printer had furnished the color plates.

“I was not conscious of my age, 61, in the dream, nor do I remember anything about being committed to draw a daily strip also. I had a much younger assistant who reminded me of Tom Lantini, an artist friend who had been a year behind me in Sayre High, our hometown school in Sayre, Pennsylvania. In the dream, I’d left certain areas blank in the panels making up the Sunday page, and my nameless assistant had done the art to fill in those places. My main character, a male who wore a tight-fitting Superman-type costume with a flowing cape, occupied a space several panels high right in the middle of the page — quite a daring concept for a comic layout. I knew the character type well because in the early 1940s, in ‘real’ life, I’d been one of the artists who had drawn the very popular comic-book hero, Captain Marvel. My dream character stood confidently facing the reader — except that I’d omitted drawing his head! My assistant had drawn the head, though, on a small separate piece of board, and protected it with a piece of tracing paper. I thought the head was too small, but well done, quite youthful with curly black hair and handsome features, as one would expect such a magical character to have. I also saw that the head was almost too youthful for the strong physique of the character I’d drawn, although I wasn’t critical of this. All that remained was for the printer to fit the head and the body together. I sat at the drawing table examining the assistant’s work.”

Tom started school a year after I had, and I helped him obtain a room in the same school-approved boarding house that I lived in, with other students. I told Jane that at first I was somewhat jealous of Tom, probably feeling that in some way he was intruding into my own special relationship with Miss Bowman. Jane said that makes my dream even better. This is her interpretation of the dream:

“Wed. Aug. 13 dream, 1980.

“Another great dream of Rob’s. In our sessions lately Seth has been talking about the natural self or natural person, saying that it is also the magical person. In this dream Rob is in the process of working out that idea, visually. His closest connection to magic would be his comics experience when he drew Captain Marvel — a magical character. The resulting image, in two parts, shows that the idea is almost completed in his mind, just needing to be put together. In the dream he sees himself returning to the comics, only the Sunday edition (special), and the superhero character is much more prominent than the comics would ordinarily have it; the smaller head representing, I think, the idea that the intellect’s place is smaller or of a lesser nature than he earlier supposed. At dream’s end Rob says that the head was almost too youthful for the body he’d drawn — maybe a reminder that the natural person is younger in ways than the intellectual self. I think that Rob is himself in the dream, represented by the super character as the magical self; and also that he is the assistant who had prepared the figure’s head.

“In the dream the assistant is a fellow student. I’m not sure of the connection unless it means that at the time he knew Tom, as youthful artists both Rob and Tom believed in the magical aspects of life — which now come to Rob’s aid, assisting him by drawing the character’s head.”

5. My Mary dream:

“Dream, very early Sunday morning, August 10, 1980.

“Difficult to recall, and what I do recall makes no sense to me at all. In vivid color: I dreamed that Jane and I were eating at a little table in an open-air restaurant or cafe-type setting. It was a beautiful summer day. Our friend Mary came up to us. She was by herself and I don’t recall her saying anything to us. She was carrying a large sketch pad, perhaps a 22-by-30-inch size. One would expect the pages of the pad to be white, ready for drawing. Instead, as Mary lifted the cover of the pad, holding the pad out for Jane and me to see, we saw that the top page was covered by a lovely large floral pattern of leaves and flowers, as one might see on bedsheets these days. I examined several pages of Mary’s pad and saw that all of them were covered by the same design, in reds and greens, etc. The pattern made the pages of the pad quite useless for their ordinary purpose. I woke up several times with this dream in mind, telling myself to remember it.”

And Jane’s interpretation, written on the same day I had the dream:

“A terrific little dream that beautifully states its message: Mary’s ideas of romance and making love (represented by modern-day flowered sheets) are being transposed from the bedroom into the area of her art, and in a way that mars the art itself. The transposition of the flowered designs of bedsheets to sheets of paper is great; Rob chose a sketch pad rather than, say, typing paper, I think, because painting is his art while Mary’s is writing. Also perhaps to make connections with Mary’s sketches of her own life. Maybe by using his own art symbol, the sketch pad instead of the typing paper, Rob reinforced the idea of Mary’s conflicts about the nature of her own work.

“As you can see, the dream states all this far more simply and concisely than I’m able to!”

But, I told Jane, she did a far better conscious and intuitive job of interpreting my dream of Mary than I ever could. I’m grateful!

The individual I painted in 1968 is very similar to the magical “Captain Marvel” kind of character I created 12 years later, in my dream in 1980. I do not claim any connections between the two, although some may exist on other than conscious levels.