“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Other concepts are really not basically workable even in your own physical reality. A rigid, dogmatic concept of good and evil will force you to perceive physical existence as a battleground of opposing forces, with the poor unwary soul almost as a buffer. Or you will think of the poor soul as a blackboard eraser, slapped between two hands — one good and one evil.

You are familiar with your own view of the world. As you leave your usual orientation, however, altering the focus of your consciousness, you may very well structure your new experience just as you do your physical one. At the same time, you are more free. You have greater leeway. You are used to projecting your beliefs onto physical objects and events. When you leave your home station, those objects and events no longer present themselves in the same fashion.

(Long pause.) None of this is necessary. There is no danger in the exercises I suggest. You are in far greater danger the longer you inhibit your natural feelings, and alterations of consciousness often present you with the framework in which these come to light. If they do not in one way or another come to your attention, then it is very possible that the denied energy behind them will erupt in ruptured relationships or illnesses.

These will be relatively meaningless, however, if you do not learn how to examine them. They are not to be simply filed away and forgotten. You should write down a description of each scene and what you remember of it, including your feelings both at the time of the dream, and later when you record it. The very effort to take this camera with you makes you more of a conscious explorer, and automatically helps you to expand your own awareness while you are in the dream state. Each picture will serve as just one small glimpse of a different kind of reality. You cannot make any valid judgment on the basis of one or two pictures alone.

(Pause at 11:40.) Inner weather changes constantly, even as the exterior weather does. One dream picture with a dreary cast, therefore, is not much different from a physical photograph taken on a rainy afternoon.

Many people, however, remembering a dark dream, become frightened. You even structure your dreams, of course. For that matter, your dream world is as varied as the physical one. Each physical photographer has an idea of what he wants to capture on film, and so to that extent he structures his picture and his view. The same applies to the dream state. You have all kinds of dreams. You can take what you want, so to speak, from dream reality, as basically you take what you want from waking life. For that reason, your dream snapshots will show you the kind of experience that you are choosing from inner reality.

(In ordinary terms I can only wait, of course, to see if I decide to create that distant probable moment in this reality. In the meantime, I have no conscious memory of being an old man, let alone one in the specific, dependent situation in which I saw myself: However, aside from the idea of simultaneous time, I do believe that an individual can touch upon at least some of his or her earlier lives, provided enough long-term effort is given to the endeavor. Since through my internal vision I evidently looked in upon a particular past life of my own, however unaware I was of what I was doing, it seems that the knowledge of that existence may not be too deeply buried within my psyche. I might try jogging my memory through suggestion, to see what else about that life I can recall. It would also be interesting to see whether the same technique could help me tune in to my future in this life.

2. When I come across material that puts down the physical body, I sometimes try to counter such negative projections by turning to one of the technological accomplishments of our “degraded” species: I study photographs of minute portions of the human body, taken with a scanning electron microscope. Then I experience a series of steps in thinking — not all of them good, I’m afraid — and I’d like to mention each one in turn.

Next, I ask myself how such a marvelously structured being can think of its image as inferior to anything, especially since we’re far from understanding it even on a “mere” physical basis, let alone from any sort of nonphysical standpoint. Jane’s own abilities, for instance, raise questions about certain biological attributes as well as mental ones; in large part our society still doesn’t want to contend with such challenges at this time.

After tonight’s session, Jane told me that his Practice Element 13 was one of the two she’d had insights on during the night preceding the deleted 717th (James-Jung) session. Practice Element 14 didn’t seem at all familiar to her, though. See Note 1 for Session 718.

My eyes were closed, and something about my bearing or pose reminded the present me of my father in his old age. When he lay dying, early in February 1971, I stood so that I had a view of him similar to the one I’d just experienced of myself. I was sure that this old man was me, though, and no one else. I was very thin beneath the blanket, which I believe was an ivory color.

5. All in Volume 1: Note 1 for Session 698 contains quotations from the dream material Seth gave in the 92nd session for September 28, 1964. Then see the equally interesting information on dreams in Session 699; I especially like Seth’s statement that “In a way, one remembered dream can be compared to a psychological photograph….” Jane’s poem, My Dreaming Self, is presented in the notes following that session, along with references to other dream material.