“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“The energy behind his ‘black thing’ was the energy of hidden fears, but such a thing could be formed by anyone, since there are fears in any man. Ruburt tried to isolate them, give them form, and fight them all at once. The thing was actually a rather clumsy lower-dimensional animal, a provoked dumb dog of other dimensions who then attacked him, symbolically enough, by biting. Any ‘thing’ so created entirely of fears would be frightened and particularly angry at its creator. It could do nothing but attack to protect whatever reality it had, for it knew Ruburt created it only to slay it, if possible.

“It did have reality, therefore. Ruburt leapt back to safety and normal consciousness. The thing then dissipated [as far as Ruburt was concerned]. For when Ruburt ‘ran home’ he automatically withdrew the energy [of his attention] from it. … Ruburt tried to separate from himself all those elements he considers negative, and fight them at once, almost as if in so doing he could remove evil from the universe.

He starts off by saying: “The personality is composed of energy gestalts. As the personality is changed by any experience, it is changed by its dreams; and as an individual is molded by his physical environment to some extent, so is he molded by the dreams which he himself creates. … The self is limitless. When your perceptions fail, it seems to you that boundaries appear. For example, it seems to you that dreams cease when you are no longer aware of them. This is not so.

Consider this early passage from session 92, which I now accept as basic: “Each dream begins with psychic energy which the individual transforms not into physical matter, but into a reality every bit as functional and real. He forms the idea into a dream object or event with amazing discrimination, so that the dream object itself gains existence and exists in numerous dimensions. …

“Although the dreamer creates his dreams for his own purposes, selecting only those symbols which have meaning to him, he projects them outward in a value fulfillment and psychic expansion. The expansion occurs as the dream is acted out. A contraction occurs as the dreamer is finished with the dream events, but energy cannot be taken back.”

Seth calls dream-created personalities (such as my “black thing”), dual-hybrid constructions. In my case, the “expansion” he’s speaking of occurred as I formed it with my own psychic energy. The “contraction” took place as I withdrew the main energy of my attention from it; but I could not take back the energy that I had given it that resulted in its existence. The creature continued to exist, but not in my dimension; it was set free on its own.

Still speaking of dreams, Seth says: “Energy projected into any kind of construction, psychic or physical, cannot be recalled, but must follow the laws of the particular form into which it has been for the moment molded. Therefore, when the dreamer contracts his multi-realistic objects backward, ending for himself the dream he has constructed, he ends it for himself only. The reality of the dream continues.”

The energy, as Seth explains it, can be transformed, but not annihilated.

“Dream locations are not superimposed upon, say, the bed and chest and chair. They exist composed of the very same atoms and molecules that in the waking state you perceive as bed and chest and chair. Objects, remember, are the results of your perception. From energy you form patterns which you then recognize as objects and use. But the objects are useless unless you are focused within the dimension for which they were specifically formed.

“There is form within dream reality,” he said, “but form is first of all potential existing within psychic energy. The potential form exists long before its physical materialization. The house that you may live in within five years may not yet exist in your terms. It may not have been built yet, therefore physically you would not perceive it. Still, such a house does have form, and does exist within the Spacious Present.

Those who are concerned about the present racial situation “dream individually and collectively of changing it. They act out in their dreams the various ways in which changeabouts could occur. These dreams actually help bring about the resulting change that will then happen. The very energy and direction of the dreams will help change the situation.”