“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

A double dream is like the double life lived by some people who have two families — one in each town — and who seemingly manipulate separate series of events that other people would find most confusing. If the body can only follow certain sequences, still consciousness has inner depths of action that do not show on the surface line of experience. Double dreams are clues to such activity.

(Early last week a friend sent me a copy of a “double dream” experienced by his lady. Then as Jane and I were discussing the episode last Friday night, I found myself saying that one explanation for double dreams — that is, the awareness of experiencing two dreams at once, or a dream within a dream — could be that each half of the brain has its own separate dream, the two dreams then try to emerge together into ordinary consciousness.

(11:41.) These strands are like double dreams that continue. They also serve as a framework to the recognized self. In periods of stress or challenge the recognized self may sense these other strains of consciousness, and realize that a fuller experience is possible, a greater psychological thickness. On some occasions in the dream state the recognized self may then enlarge its perception enough to take advantage of these other portions of its own identity. Double or triple dreams may represent such encounters at times. Consciousness always seeks the richest, most creative form, while ever maintaining its own integrity. The imagination, playing, the arts and dreaming, allow it to enrich its activities by providing feedback other than that received in the physical environment itself.

(As I talked so easily about this, without any conscious foreknowledge or preparation, I realized I’d been mulling over our friend’s letter, and that this was the way my ideas spontaneously came out. I further said that although the two hemispheres of the brain were separate, they were united at the brain stem and by the corpus callosum, and so there were all kinds of interchanges between them. In the same way, in the double dream there would be relationships between the two dreams.

(Before finishing the notes I thought of asking a few other people if they had either heard of double dreaming, or had experienced it. [...] Jane and I have known Sue since 1965, yet as far as any of us could remember [and for whatever reasons], the subject of double dreaming had never been discussed among us.

[...] Grinning, she proceeded to confound me further by describing the double dreams of another class member — since, obviously, the individual in question had also had certain dream adventures that Jane and I didn’t know about. [...] See Note 2 for any other information on double dreams that I may assemble, as well as for an excerpt from the description Sue wrote [at my request] of a multiple-dream happening of her own.

2. A note added a month later: My surprise over the double-dream phenomenon continues, for by now I know of nine people (including Sue Watkins and myself), who have experienced either the same thing or closely related versions of it. [...] Both are professional writers, and their experiences with double dreams were relayed to me by Tam Mossman, Jane’s editor.

Already it seems that without too much difficulty an investigator could acquire enough material on double dreaming for a most interesting study. The variations mentioned above are intriguing in themselves, and range from an account of an “overlapping double dream” — that is, the individual’s second dream began in the middle of the first one, and extended beyond the end of the first dream — to one in which the dreamer told me, “I knew I’d been having two dreams at once, but I remembered them almost as one dream.”

(“A double, or something twice, or a negative.” [...] After break Seth agrees with Jane and me when we assign the double or twice mentioned here to the frequent use of the numeral 2 on the second page of Wendell’s letter.

(“Two again, like a double exposure.” [...] Double exposure, above, also has picture and artist connotations.

[...] I sealed it in the usual double envelopes after placing it between two pieces of Bristol board. [...]

(At 10:03, her eyes closed, Jane took the double sealed envelope from me for the 72nd envelope experiment. [...]

[...] He also promised to call an ophthalmologist friend of his, to explain Jane’s case to him and hear what this individual—a Dr. Werner—had to say about Jane’s double vision. Thus, tonight in his call Jim told me that Dr. Werner had said that Jane’s double vision was “the end result” of something muscular in nature. [...]

[...] Events began to come to a head last week with the professional visit of “our” optometrist, Jim Adams, to check Jane’s double vision problems.

[...] Jim agreed with us—and Seth, incidentally—that Jane’s trouble with double vision was muscular in nature. [...]

[...] To that degree and in the light of this discussion, you end up with what I will call —and have in the past called—the overly conscientious self, which attempts to deal with the attitudes of the Sinful Self by checking and double-checking all the time, by being, in other words, overly conscientious: is Ruburt dealing with “the truth,” and so forth? [...]

[...] Again, the interest on the same amount of money nearly doubles. [...]

[...] You do it by changing over your accounts in whatever areas you are concerned, from the old savings account to the super-account with its nearly double rewards for the same effort. [...]

He changes his health account to Framework 2, where he need expend no more effort than he is now, but the results, or the interest, will be far more than doubled. [...]

[...] You do not concentrate upon the old, comparatively lesser returns, but you consider the account turned over, where for the same amount of effort your rewards will be far more than doubled. [...]

Ruburt has been working on a book of poems called The Dialogues, and in it recently he wrote of the double worlds. [...]

For a moment he saw double worlds with his physical vision. [...]

[...] Working like crazy, really on a creative ‘high.’ Just before supper time I’d been writing about the single yet double universe of self and soul, and the last line had quoted the mortal self:

‘Let us, using our double vision,

(A note: as of now my original single and/or double spaced typewritten record of the Seth material is 4,636 pages long. [...]

(“A double exposure.” [...] We don’t remember Loren referring to any double exposures in a literal sense.

(I sealed the object as usual in the regular double envelopes after enclosing it between two pieces of Bristol.

[...] A double exposure. [...]

(“How about the double exposure?”)

[...] “The last time I did—some months ago—I thought I looked terrible, with a double chin and my face bloated all out of shape....” I told her her face wasn’t bloated out of shape, that it looked much better, and that she appeared to have a double chin because of her position in bed. [...]

1. I can add that my counterpart, Peter Smith, has also enjoyed some double dreams, as I call them. See the material on the double dreams of Sue Watkins, Lee R. Gandee, and myself in Session 692, with its Note 2, for Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality.

The same ideas are so dead-ended, however, that they often trigger a different kind of response entirely, in which a scientist who has held to those beliefs most stubbornly, suddenly does a complete double-take. [...]

With some variations, the same kind of “sudden conversion” can occur when a person who has berated religious concepts and beliefs suddenly does a double-take of a different kind, ending up as a twice-born Christian.

7. In Session 692 for Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality see the material on Sue’s double dreams in the opening notes and in Note 2. Personally, at least, I see strong connections between the idea of double dreams and the kind of conscious reincarnational memory — or knowledge — detailed by Sue in this appendix.

[...] On a sheet of white paper torn from a pad, same color ink as the tracing on page 189, folded as indicated, placed between two pieces of Bristol and then sealed in double envelopes. [...]

[...] It was written in a dark pen on white paper torn from a pad the same size, and was folded once before insertion into the double envelopes. [...]

[...] It was folded inside the double envelopes.

[...] The back impression could have been picked up by Seth because the object was folded inside the sealed double envelopes.

[...] This evening I placed it between two pieces of Bristol, then sealed it in the usual double envelopes.

[...] When Jane carefully opened the double envelopes experiment, I found the object positioned thus far as I could tell:

[...] As noted earlier, when the double envelopes were opened the object appeared to have been centered within them. [...]

[...] “In the corner?" As noted on page 209, apparently the object was centered inside the double envelopes. [...]

[...] Ruburt sat physically on the couch, yet at another level he did sit here (in the chair facing the couch), and in our relationship that was a fairly “sophisticated” kind of manipulation, involving the projection of a form outward—the double. But in this case the double was going about “its own affairs.” [...]

I’m a great double-thinker; that is I vaguely recall some of Seth’s remarks in last night’s session about the heroic dimension and then I think: is this to be taken literally? [...]

[...] As stated, it originally was quite thick, so I peeled the top layer from it, containing the design printed in red, to insert into the double envelopes. [...] When this thin layer was enclosed between the regular two pieces of Bristol, then sealed in the usual double envelope, it was not possible to judge by feel, or weight, that it was in any way somewhat different from the usual envelope object.

[...] It was sealed in the usual double envelope between two pieces of Bristol.

(At 10:20 I handed Jane the 35th double envelope and she took it without opening her eyes. [...]

(Now see my notes on page 305, concerning my consciously forgetting the contentsof the double envelope used in this evening’s experiment. [...]

[...] Ruburt did a double-take after I told you it would sell well. [...]

[...] It was placed between the usual double Bristols and sealed in the usual double envelopes.

[...] It was folded once horizontally in the double envelopes, as indicated, although there were also vertical fold marks in it.

[...] As stated, the object was folded once upon insertion into the double envelopes. [...]

[...] Come here,” I said, and Rob came to the doorway where he saw his own double clearly. They stared at each other, the double looking as amazed as Rob was.

[...] As I spoke to him, I turned my head and saw another Rob, a perfect double, standing in a room directly across the corridor. [...]

[...] But what about Rob’s doubles and Miss Roohan?