“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

“On one level the personality attempts to solve problems through dream constructions … and often gives freedom to actions that cannot be adequately expressed within the confines of waking life. If the attempt fails, then the problem or action [as we’ve seen before] may materialize as an illness.

“Consider, for example, a situation in which a personality needs to express dependency, but feels such expression inappropriate. If he is able to form a dream in which he plays a dependent part, then the problem may be solved within the dream state. In many instances, this is precisely what happens. The individual may never recall such a dream, but the experience would be valid and the dependency expressed.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

I stated my case, while they listened politely. Their spokesman told me that their dead leader had promised them that on his return he would perform one particular feat for which he was known to prove his identity. He asked me, then, to show by my actions that I was this personality, ready to take over his rightful position. Rob and I both smiled, having anticipated the test.

The Turkish life was the only colorful past life I’ve had to my present knowledge. The Boston life was ordinary enough, according to what Seth said. I made no big splash as a medium, and gave sittings in order to help others and help pay the rent. I was quite undisciplined, however, and flighty—personality defects that I am trying to correct in this life. This dream, I believe, was to remind me that I had once been in a position of authority, and should not now be afraid of responsibility, or of my abilities. Seth insists that many people have dreams that give them information about past lives, but often they do not remember them simply because they do not realize the importance of dreams in general.

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.

Whole blocks of sessions deal with the methods used and the conditions that can be met in projections of consciousness from the dream state. Seth says that he has personally assisted me in some of my own projection experiments, but that I have not been aware of his assistance. I’ve never dreamed of Seth, and I find this rather strange. I’ve often awakened, fully alert, in the middle of the night, suddenly conscious that I’ve been giving a kind of Seth session. I can hear Seth’s words going through my head like signals. It’s as if I’m tuning in on a radio broadcast that I’m not supposed to be hearing, because when I start to listen there is a clicking sound in my head, and the “station” turns off. On two occasions I heard enough to know what was being said and to whom the sessions were directed. Later the people involved told me that they dreamed that Seth was speaking to them through me on the same nights as my experiences. I had said nothing to them; they volunteered the information.

In other words, our dreams attain a certain immortality of their own, along with our personalities. Seth makes this clear: “Each individual from birth forms his own counterpart from built-up, individual, continuous electrical signals that include his dreams, thoughts, desires, and experiences. At physical death his personality then exists detached from its physical form.”