“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

For a minute I was afraid to open my physical eyes. “Boy, if it’s still here, I’ve had it,” I thought. But it was gone. At least it was in another level of existence. I thought of waking Rob to tell him, but decided not to interrupt his sleep.

Now that I was safe I was more than a little ashamed of myself for being such a coward, but I wasn’t so complacent that I felt like going right back to sleep, either! So I got up, drank a glass of milk, and thought of all the things I should have done—like saying grandly: “Get thou behind me, Satan,” or some such. The least I could have done, I thought, was bite back.

In a sort of backhanded compliment, Seth asked Rob to tell me that my abilities were improving—it was a well-made thought-form. Now, I don’t propose for a moment that any of my readers attempt such a foolhardy venture. But I do suggest that perhaps some of them have already done so without knowing it, waking only with the memory of a particularly bad nightmare.

Seth offers some evocative suggestions as to how dreams can be used as direct therapy, and some of his concepts could be of great aid in self-help programs and in psychotherapy.

“Much work has been done to interpret dreams, but little to control the direction of activity within them. Upon proper suggestion, this can be an excellent method of therapy. Negative dreams tend to reinforce the negative aspects of the personality, helping to form vicious circles of unfortunate complications. Dream actions can be turned toward fulfilling constructive expectations, which can themselves effect a change for the better.

“Many illnesses could largely be avoided through such dream therapy. Rather harmlessly, aggressive tendencies could be given freedom within the dream state. Suggestions would be given that the individual involved would experience, say, aggressiveness, within a dream. It would also be suggested to him that he learn to understand his aggressions by watching himself while he was dreaming [watching the dream as he would a play]. If I may indulge in a fantasy, theoretically you could imagine a massive experiment in dream therapy where wars were fought by sleeping, not waking, nations.”

When I first read this session I thought this was a great way to get rid of your repressions—dream them away! If you’re really furious at someone and don’t dare retaliate, then you can give yourself the suggestion before sleep that in a dream, you’ll really get even. But it isn’t that easy.

Seth says quite firmly: “There are other considerations that must be understood. … When aggressiveness is the problem, for example, the preliminary dream suggestion should include a statement that the aggression will not be directed against a particular person. In all cases, it is the intangible element [aggressiveness, here] that is the problem, and not the person against whom the individual may want to vent it.

“We do not want an individual to suggest that he dream of harming another. There are several reasons for this, including telepathic realities that you do not yet understand, and guilt patterns which would be unavoidable. We are not talking about substituting dream action for physical action. We are discussing particular problems that need treatment.”

Over and over Seth says that a dream or imaginative experience is as real as any waking event. If you have a period of depression, you are apt to have depressing dreams during the same period. But Seth suggests the following exercise as a dream therapy: before sleep, suggest to yourself that you will have a pleasant or joyful dream that will completely restore your good spirits and vitality. Unless the depression is very deep-seated, it will be broken or greatly weakened when you awaken.

The other dream was even more vivid, and really enjoyable. I don’t know when I’ve had such a great time—certainly not in waking life. On Seth’s suggestion, I told myself before sleep that I would have a dream that would give me further information about my own reincarnational past. At this time I really didn’t believe in reincarnation, but I said to Rob, “Well, what have I got to lose? I’ll try it.” Then I gave myself the suggestion several times and fell asleep.

But what about that location, the Turkish hall? How real was it? How real are the places we seem to visit while we sleep? Here’s what Seth has to say: “You think that you are conscious only when you are awake. You assume yourselves to be unconscious when you sleep. The dice are indeed loaded on the side of the waking mind. But pretend for a moment that you are looking at this situation from the other side.

“Pretend that you are in the dream state and concerned with the problem of waking consciousness and existence. From that viewpoint, the picture is entirely different, for you are indeed conscious while you sleep.

“If you have little memory of dream locations when you are awake, you have little memory of ‘physical’ locations when you are in the dream state. When the physical body lies in bed, it is separated by a vast distance from the dream location in which the dreaming self may dwell. But this distance has nothing to do with space, for the dream location can exist simultaneously with the room in which the body sleeps.

Seth gave us instructions first in dream recall. Following this, he told us how to awaken our critical faculties while we were dreaming, and how to project our consciousness out of our bodies, using a dream as a sort of launching pad. I was always delighted to try any experiments Seth suggested, and I still am. The resulting personal experience gave me subjective evidence of the validity of many of Seth’s concepts; besides, I like to do things on my own.