“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(As we were eating lunch today Jane said she thought Seth would discuss the question of good and evil, re our conversation on those subjects the other day. Before the session I showed her a copy of my dream for last Monday morning—one that had been so unpleasant that I’d avoided writing it down until after supper tonight. It’s on file in my notebook for August 7, 1978. In the dream I saw myself as a rather corpulent older individual wearing robes as they do in the Middle East; at an elaborate feast I watched mice being burned alive in a special gadget, before we skinned and ate their corpses. In the dream I swore off doing so ever again. The dream has stayed very vividly with me ever since I had it. Once I’d written it down, I saw that its subject matter fit in very well with the idea of good and evil, and told Jane I hoped Seth would use it in any discussion of his own.

You have been considering the nature of good and evil, and in your dream you presented yourself with a capsule demonstration. It is good to eat, and each creature seeks food. In the world of nature you say there is a hunter and prey, and yet in that natural world “hunter and prey” are peculiarly suited to each other. The hunter is naturally equipped to kill in such and such a manner. The prey is most easily killed by such maneuvers.

Your dream was an excellent rendition, for here you have men unaware of the mouse’s dilemma to such an extent that it was beside the point—so taken for granted that it became invisible. The purpose to eat was good—well-intentioned. But the means were not those that would benefit all involved, for the mouse died no quick death.

In the dream you make a decision never to partake of such a feast again, and the decision simply represents the multitudinous like decisions that are made by individual people, when they finally recognize the fact that a given act, considered acceptable in the past, does not fit in with the overall intent of life at large. Such feasts were eaten often by the Arabs and the Turks.

(“Are you saying that my dream had reincarnational connotations? I wondered about it when I wrote it down, but I didn’t say so.”)

I am saying if you ask me—and you have not—that your dream contained some important insights into your own questions, and that you might have interpreted it yourself.

You could have “meditated” upon it. You do not appreciate your own dream, or your appreciation of it is too remote—and yes, it does contain some reincarnational data, for it shows you a moment in a life when a decision was made, even though the emotional disgust that you felt at the time was separated from you—for the mouse at the time stood not only for itself but also for the victims of war, burned bodies you had seen while soldiers went about the remains to see what loot might be left.