“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

One night I had a frightening dream that seemed very real. I found myself in our bedroom, out of my body, and suddenly I realized that someone or something was directly above me. The next minute I was pushed down to the foot of the bed, off into the air, and then down to the dark corner of the bedroom floor. Above me was what I can only describe as a big black thing like a bloated, blurred human form, but larger and very solid.

It sounds ridiculous, but I knew that this thing was “out to get me.” I knew that I was out of my body, and I was overwhelmed with astonishment, as well as very frightened. Although I’d read of people being attacked by demons or the like while they were “projecting,” I just didn’t believe in demons. So what was it? I didn’t have time to wonder, because it bit me several times on the hand. It was amazingly oppressive, and kept up its efforts to drag me farther away from my body into the bedroom closet.

In dismay, I heard Rob snoring. In any case, I wasn’t in my physical body, and he probably wouldn’t know anything was wrong anyhow. And where was Seth? Where were all those “guides” who were supposed to come running to your aid when you got in predicaments like this? All these thoughts went scurrying through my mind as I tried to fight this thing off. I was very conscious of the creature’s weight, which was really amazing, and its intent—which was to maul me up as much as possible, if not to kill me outright.

The thing pulled back for an instant, much like a huge startled animal, and I slipped from beneath it and shot fast as a rocket for my body, with it after me. In other words, I beat a fast cowardly retreat. I hit my body so quickly that my physical head was spinning, but no matter. My body never felt so welcome.

Now Seth said: “Our friend [meaning me] attempted to choose a different battlefield last night. He decided to think of all negative feelings as enemies, and to give them form in another plane of reality where he could do battle with them. This was not an astral plane, but a lower one.

“But this fact is Ruburt’s safeguard in his out-of-body travels—as long as he remembers it. The words ‘May peace be with you’ will get him through any difficulty in other layers of reality—for as he formed that image, others also form images and he could encounter them. To wish them peace will give them some comfort, for they do have a kind of reality. To fear them is to put yourself into their realm of reality, and then you are forced to fight on their terms. There is no need for this.”

This episode was an out-of-body experience from the dream state, though, and it will serve to make one point: dream reality is as valid and real as waking reality. Dreams definitely affect daily life. They can improve our health or help deepen a mood of depression. There are ways to use dreams purposefully, however, to improve our existence, even though I admit that the last instance was not a very good example.

While all of this is of practical interest, Rob and I are even more intrigued by Seth’s explanation of dream reality. Since I’ve had many out-of-body experiences from the dream state, I was rather concerned about the reality of the environments in which I found myself. Seth began his discussions on the nature of dream reality very soon after the sessions began, and they still continue. Until I learned from Seth to “monitor” my own dreams, and awaken my critical faculties, I was simply astounded by some of his statements.

Each dream object is actually double- or triple-decked, a symbol for other, deeper data. A dream involving reincarnational information, for example, may also serve to help us face a present-day problem by reminding us of other unused abilities inherent in our personalities. I’ve had two particularly vivid reincarnational dreams. One, occurring shortly after our sessions began, really frightened me because I was afraid that it might be precognitive, I dreamed that I was an old woman in a very poor hospital ward of some kind. I was dying of cancer and knew it, but wasn’t a bit frightened. An old man beside me was also about to die. I told him not to worry, that I would be there to help him. Then I died, but there seemed to be no break in consciousness. I helped the old man out of his body and kept telling him that everything was all right.

As the dream opened, we entered a large hall. A group of men, attired in the same costumes, sat on brightly colored pillows on the floor, roughly in a circle, with the center of the floor clear. I knew all of the men from a previous life in which I had been their leader, dying very young. These men had grown old, while I had been reborn. Now I had come back to fulfill a promise I had made to return. I was well aware that they would not recognize me in this body in which they had not known me.

The center of the hall was vacant except for a few low tables. Rob-to-be asked that these be removed for the demonstration. This was done and the men came closer, squatting on the pillows. My partner stood behind me. I took several light bouncing footsteps that were somehow ceremonial, and then left my physical body. It slumped down to the floor, and my partner gently moved it to the side.

Then, in my astral body I went flying through the hall, which had a high-domed ceiling. Laughing at what I considered a great practical joke, I swung low above each man in turn and whisked off his turban. My partner handed me a feather—apparently he could see me clearly, and I could manipulate physical objects. Waving the feather through the air, I flew back and forth again several times so that, watching the feather, the men could follow my progress above them.

All the while my partner was laughing loudly, and I was having a tremendous time. Finally I returned to my body and stood up to the cries and shouts of recognition. The rest I hardly remember. I know women were brought to us, but, smiling, we waved them away, preferring to talk to our old comrades first. All of us had very dark skin.

“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.

This does not mean that we do not sometimes leave our bodies and travel in our dream or astral bodies to other physical locations. According to Seth we do so often, whether or not we remember. Some of my students, for example, have frequent out-of-body experiences from both the waking and the dream states, and on several such occasions we seem to have met in my living room.

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.

Look at this projection from the dream state, for example. One morning after breakfast I lay down to try a dream projection. This simply means that I can sometimes recognize when I am dreaming, bring my normal “waking consciousness” into the dream situation, and then use it to project my consciousness elsewhere. When I got to this point that morning, I felt myself leave my body, knowing all the while that it was safe and comfortable in bed, with the door locked.

I didn’t know what to do or say. “Look, I’m really in an out-of-body state. This is an astral projection!” They’d never believe me. But what about the three books with my name on them and the clerk’s knowing smile?

“You just aren’t that good at it yet,” one of them said. And I really got angry. Whether I was astral-traveling or whatever, these people were really having a good laugh at my expense.

“Look,” I said, “I’m in my astral body. My physical body is home in bed.”

Then, without any warning, I felt myself pulled away. There was a terrific whooshing sound and I was back in my body. I really felt tricked. Usually its quite difficult to go right back to the same location, but I was so angry that I willed myself back. Not that it did me much good. I “landed” on the same corner, but the young man was nowhere to be found. Then I set out to find the hotel, and while I swear I walked the block three times and recognized the other buildings, I just couldn’t find the hotel. Finally I returned to my body.

“The electric reality of a dream is decoded, so that its effects are experienced not only by the brain, but in the furthest reaches of the body. Dream experiences, long forgotten consciously, are forever contained as electrically coded data within the cells of the physical organism. … They exist within the cells [along with all an individual’s experience] … The cells form about them. These electrically coded signals form counterparts of complete experience, and the pattern is then independent of physical reality.”