“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Persons vary in the amount of sleep they need, and no pill will ever allow them to dispense with sleep entirely, for too much work is done in that state. However, this could be done far more effectively with two, rather than one, sleep periods of lesser duration.

There are many variations, in fact, that would be better than your present system. Ideally, sleeping five hours at a time, you gain the maximum benefit, and anything else over this time is not nearly as helpful. Those who require more sleep would then take, say, a two-hour nap. For others a four-hour block sleep session and two naps would be highly beneficial. With suggestion properly given, the body can recuperate in half the time now given to sleep. In any case it is much more bracing and efficient to have the physical body active rather than inactive for, say, eight to ten hours.

You would retain a far greater memory of your subjective experiences, and your body would be healthier, if these sleeping patterns were changed. Six to eight hours of sleep in all would be sufficient with the nap patterns outlined. And even those who think they now need more sleep than this would find that they did not, if all the time was not spent in one block. The entire system, physical, mental, and psychic, would benefit.

In earlier periods of time, even though there were no electric lights for example, sleep was not long and continuous at night, for sleeping quarters were not as secure. The caveman, for example, while sleeping was on the alert for predators. The mysterious aspects of the natural night in outside surroundings kept him partially alert. He awakened often, and surveyed the nearby land and his own place of shelter.

Now: It is well known that fluctuations of consciousness and alertness exist in the sleep state. [...]

Some waking states, of course, come very close to sleep states. [...]

(10:28.) Because of your habits of an extended sleep period, followed by an extended waking period, you do not take advantage of these rhythms of consciousness. [...]

Now: This extended period, given to waking consciousness without rest periods, builds up chemicals in the blood that are discharged in sleep. [...] The long sleep period to which you are accustomed then does become necessary. [...] The ego feels threatened by the extended “leave of absence” it must take, becomes wary of sleep, and sets up barriers against the dream state. [...]

[...] In sleep when (whene) you often presume yourself to be unconscious (unconsious) you may be far more conscious than you are now, but simply using abilities of consciousness that you do not accept as real or valid (valed) in waking (waping) life. [...]

[...] It was something like coming out of a deep sleep and immediately making a strong effort to focus in physical reality.)

Consciousness does not refresh itself in sleep. [...] Consciousness does not sleep then in those terms and while it may be turned off it is not like a light.

As mentioned in Seth Speaks, my earlier book, great distinctions are made between your waking and sleeping states. [...] Many of you will not find it practical to alter your sleeping hours because of work commitments. Some of you will be able to do so, however, and those of you who are really interested in this endeavor can at least achieve some variation, on occasion, that will allow you to connect your sleeping and waking activities with far greater effectiveness.

[...] I suggest a six-hour sleeping block of time at one session, and no more. [...]

(Pause.) Many will find that a five-hour steady sleeping period is quite sufficient, with a nap as required. [...]

(11:37.) There is a give-and-take chemical reaction, or rather chemical rhythms of reactions, that are far more effective in the shorter sleep periods. Many of you sleep through periods that should be those of your greatest creativity and alertness, in which the conscious and unconscious are most beautifully focused and at one. The conscious mind is often drugged with sleep just when it could be deriving its greatest benefits from the unconscious, and be able to poise most meaningfully in the reality that you know. [...]

[...] (Pause.) Such a change in your waking and sleeping patterns very nicely helps cut through your habitual ways of looking at the nature of your own personal world, and so alters your conception of reality in general.

There are many other natural and spontaneous kinds of comprehension that can also result from the waking and sleeping rhythms that I have suggested. [...] But changed wake-sleep habits can, again, bring about a transformation in which it is obvious that dreams contain great wisdom and creativity, that the unconscious is indeed quite conscious, and that in fact the individual sense of identity can be retained in the dream state. [...]

Animals follow their own natural waking-sleeping schedules, and in their way derive far greater benefits from both states than you, and use them with greater effectiveness — particularly along the lines of the body’s built-in system of therapy. They know exactly when to alter their patterns to longer or shorter sleep periods, therefore adjusting the adrenaline output and regulating all of the bodily hormones.

In the natural body-mind relationship the sleep state operates as a great connector, an interpreter, allowing the free flow of conscious and unconscious material. In the kind of sleep patterns suggested, optimum conditions are set up. [...]

[...] While I attempted to sleep, one idea from among many sprang out at me, literally shocking me: ‘We are IN God. [...]

[...] (Quietly:) Your attitudes toward sleep, dreams, or any alterations of consciousness are all colored to some extent then by beliefs concerning good and evil in your Western society. [...]