[Music] Seth dreams and projection of consciousness by Jane Roberts introduction by Robert F butts published in 1987 by Stillpoint publishing read by Martin John part 1 intrusions from the interior continuation part 1 number 3 introduction of Seth further steps into the interior universe during the rest of that September in 1963 I reread the idea construction manuscript many times trying to understand it and hoping to recapture some of the feelings I had had during its delivery now and then flashing insights came to me in response but more often than not I just sat there frustrated my intellect just could not get beyond certain points and I knew it suddenly however I entered a period of intense creative activity ending a dry spell that had lasted for nearly a year ideas for poetry in particular came so quickly that I hardly had time to write them down it wasn't too difficult to trace most of these to the idea construction manuscript also I began a new book because of the miss Cunningham dream and the idea construction experience Rob suggested that I try some experiments in ESP and expansion of consciousness and do a book on the results negative or positive those of you who have read my two other books in this field noted the experiments were astonishingly successful and led through the Ouija board to our first contact with Seth I've described those early sessions elsewhere but I'm including instead a poem that is a dramatic intuitive statement about my feelings at the time actually several episodes are condensed into one in the poem Seth didn't really announce himself until we had worked with the Ouija board four times and it was in the middle of the eighth session that I began to speak for him almost from the beginning however I did anticipate what the board was going to say and the poem is as valid as any strictly factual statement I could make about those sessions if not more so poem the visitor we tried the Ouija board one night my husband Rob and I the cat sat on the bright blue rug hot coffee bubbled on the stove this thing will never work I said we must be out of our minds but we weren't at least not yet the cat smiled but didn't say anything then the little pointer moved as if a thousand molecules grew legs and carried it upon their backs lightning fast across the board you're moving it I shouted hun that isn't fair what a riot I tried to laugh I'm not doing it Rob said you may call me Seth the letters spelled Rob looked up but didn't speak the cat strolled about in the warm lamplight the coffee must be done I cried I ran into the kitchen do you want some now Rob shook his head there's something that wants you back at the board you'd better sit down again I stared at him he meant it I knew him well enough to know I said as defiantly as I could it's only a game besides we don't know any Seth but my mind felt crowded out of itself by thoughts not its own as if someone were settling down in my skull that I hadn't invited in then my visitors sat with my husband and smiled out through my eyes at the cat with me out of the way he seemed quite at home good evening I'm Seth my lips spoke he began walking my body about as if getting accustomed to arms and legs I had never been so astonished to be locked out of myself like that but he was benign and jovial as a bishop someone might ask in for an evening of tea and when he left me peek out through his eyes the familiar living rooms seemed very strange now as seasons come and go he visits twice a week from worlds that have no wind or snow but still have promises to keep actually the board first gave a few messages from personality called Frank Withers who insisted that he had known our neighbor miss Cunningham I didn't take this very seriously at first but he also said that he knew an elderly woman who worked with me at a local art gallery where I had a part-time job when questioned this woman told me that she had known such a man though he had merely been an acquaintance this was enough to send me to miss Cunningham's apartment hoping to bring up the same name in conversation I wasn't about to tell anyone about the Ouija board messages it struck me odd also that miss Cunningham would be in any way connected with our Ouija activities this tie-in immediately reminded me of the July dream of course it was the first time miss Cunningham and I had really talked together in some time and I was shocked by this change in her her hair was unkempt she plucked nervously at her dress as she spoke she would suddenly stop in the middle of a sentence begin to hum a tune and then would forget what she had said the next moment she would be herself again then the cycle began all over did you ever know if Frank Withers I have asked finally his name came up the other day someone said you knew him withers Withers she said hmm and off she went in to a little tune Frank Withers I said feeling guilty at disturbing her yes yes her voice trailed off disappeared and returned I had many students with that name there were several I waited for more what were we saying did you want something how nice to see you she said brightly but already the opaqueness was ready to settle back so I knew it was useless disquieted I returned to my apartment as the days passed I was nervously aware of her wandering through the hallways and made it a point to look in on her now and then but we were so taken up with our own affairs that we saw her infrequently it was a strange time the assassination of JFK took place just after our sessions began the familiar physical world did not seem to be a very secure place the old ways of thought were bringing appalling fruits an uneasy December followed bitter and dreary and discouraging on the national scene and locally the weather was dark with snow piled high and yet inside our small lighted living room we both felt we were making important inroads gaining invaluable insights and finding a point of sanity amid a chaotic world in the meantime we held our board sessions twice a week by the time I returned from the art gallery on those winter afternoons it was already dark after supper I did the dishes and worked on my poetry for an hour and then Rob got out the board often these sessions lasted until midnight Rob took verbatim notes from the beginning most of the first ten sessions dealt with reincarnation and included some fascinating material on Rob's family the great tales I said I noticed we'd been using the insights about my parents and relating to them better than we ever did before Rob said sure glad to I said and reincarnation is a terrific theory to play around with remember my first published short story red wagon in fantasy and science fiction the magazine it was based on reincarnation but that doesn't mean that I believe in it or think it's true or fact maybe underneath you knew it was true even then Rob said Oh hon I retorted with uneasy and quiet unconscious scorn so the early sessions intrigued me but intellectually I couldn't accept reincarnation interestingly enough reincarnation wasn't a part of the idea construction of experience those ideas were embedded in me so thoroughly that I would never doubt them by now we were also trying other experiments for my book which I was writing during the mornings and in our 12th session Seth gave what I still think of as a cornerstone that served as a preliminary framework on which the rest of the Seth material would be built I've quoted parts of it in other books yet the analogy Seth gave us is such an excellent introduction to the interior universe and to his ideas that it is almost indispensable each time I read it I gain new insights I had only begun speaking for Seth a few sessions earlier before the 8th session all replies came through the board the whole thing seemed so wild to me just turning into something else like that I used to say the session was held on the evening of January 2nd 1964 and lasted three hours we locked the door and closed the blinds but always left the lights on for the sessions we began this one with the Ouija board but only after a few moments I shoved it aside and began dictating as Seth here's a brief excerpt from the 12th session as far as the fifth dimension is concerned I'd said that it is space I will have to try to build up the image of a structure to help you understand but then I must rip down the structure because there is none there consider than a network of wires somewhat like though different from Jane's conception of idea construction a maze of interlocking wires endlessly constructed so that looking through them there would seem to be no beginning or end your plane could be likened to a small position between four very spindly and thin wires and my plane could be likened to the small position in the neighboring wires on the other side not only are we on different sides of the same wires but we are at the same time either above or below according to your viewpoint and if you consider the wires as forming cubes then the cubes could also fit one within the other without disturbing the inhabitants of either cube one iota and these cubes are also within cubes which are themselves within cubes and I'm speaking now only of the of small particles of space taken up by your plane and mind again now I'll think in terms of your plane bounded by its small spindly set of wires and my plane on the other side these as I have said have also boundless solidarity and depth yet in usual terms do one side the other is transparent you cannot see through but the two planes move through each other constantly I hope you see what I have done here I have initiated the idea of motion for true transparency is not the ability to see through but to move through this is what I mean by fifth dimension now remove the structure of the wires and cubes things behave as if the wires and cubes were there but these are only constructions necessary even to those on my plane in order to make this comprehensible to our faculty is the faculties of any entity we merely construct imaginary lines to walk upon so real are the wall constructions of your room that you would freeze in wintertime without them yet there is no room and no walls so in a like manner the wires that we constructed are real to us in the universe although to me the walls are transparent so are the wires that we construct to make our point about the fifth dimension but for all practical purposes we must behave as if the wires were there again if you will consider our maze of wires I will ask you to imagine them feeling up everything that is with your plane and my plane like two small birds nests in the net like fabric of some gigantic tree consider for example that these wires are also mobile constantly trembling and also alive in that they not only carry the stuff of the universe but are themselves projections of this stuff and you will see how difficult it is to explain nor can I blame you for growing tired when after asking you to imagine the strange structure I then insist that you tear it apart for it is no more actually seen or touched than is the buzzing of a million invisible bees let me read you some of the material you just dictated rob said and he read several pages only a few excerpts were given here it makes more sense to me than anything I've ever read I said but where did it come from now in my ordinary state of consciousness I can only appreciate it or even criticize it the source is gone is it Rob asked or do you only permit it freedom with great caution and under certain definite conditions when he said things like that I'd get upset and the familiar living room seems strange the table chairs the couch and rug look satisfyingly normal in the warm lamplight yet I felt these shapes were highly significant only intrusions of other realities that were invisible but always active if you were doing this instead of me I said you'd be cautious too but Rob only grinned would I during all of this time Rob and I were having our first experiences with the mobility of consciousness what else could consciousness do what could mine do the questions filled me with wonder and we tried all kinds of experiments one of the most fascinating was an experiment we tried alone one night I'm including Rob's notes of it to give you an idea of the various things we were trying I'm convinced that this sort of experience is most valuable and that it helped to shake our consciousness out of its usual focus in objective ego-oriented reality for me the episode was amazingly vivid the scenes clear and bright in my mind's eye it was something like attending an dinner movie or someone might say like dreaming vividly while awake but for many then it was simply a completely new state of consciousness and awareness a psychological experience like none I'd known before I'm rather embarrassed now by the fact that we turned the lights off since our sessions and class are always conducted in normal light in those days though we didn't know how to proceed and we had read that such affairs were conducted in near darkness Rob and I sat at my wooden table with only a small electric candle lived after quite some time I began to see pictures and as Rob took notes I spoke about in my own voice describing what I was seeing and experiencing this was the resulting monologue quote I see the name Sara Wellington she was in a cobbler shop it was 1748 in England there were huge cow hides hanging up in the back room of the cobbler shop and dried cow hides hanging in another room it was very cold in there where the first cow hides were it wasn't ventilated and there were no windows there were windows in the front room though and benches and a stone floor it was a stone house with the fireplace September damp and foggy in the afternoon about four o'clock Sara Wellington was blond she had stringing hair she wasn't very pretty but boney she was seventeen her parents weren't there and Sara didn't live there either I paused Rob waited for a few moments wondering whether or not to interrupt me finally he asked quietly where did she live three doors away how long did she live he asked I paused again then I saw the whole thing very clearly and I said excited she died at 17 they're in the cobbler shop she died from burn the cobbler came out of the back room and there she was all in flames and screaming he shoved her out into the street and rolled her over and over on the stones and in the dirt but she died she she lived three doors down the street in a dark front room she had two brothers one off someplace he was a sailor the other was younger sarah's father did something for the cobbler and in return he made shoes for the younger brother and Sara was in the shop to get them another pause what Rob said can you make that clearer it was a craft I said something Sarah's father bartered for the shoes something to do with fishing nets the village was right by the sea the cobbler shop was the only one around though there were other villages Sarah's father made fish nets out of seaweed dried seaweed they wove it together like rope then made the nets the fisherman had planed wooden boats and piles of fish on a good day blackfish some of them only a few inches long some much longer averaging maybe a foot in length there was fishing all year long it wasn't seasonal the water was warm in the winter that's why it was so foggy they didn't farm too much because the ground was poor and rocky very healing so they dependent on fish do you know the name of the village Rob asked I had been seeing everything that I had been describing and now the name to peered in my head Levin Shire it was fewer than 300 people on the northeast coast of England the people also got some of their food from another village further north for some reason the land was better there I kept seeing more I would think that I was telling Rob about each scene as I saw it but then he would ask a question and I'd realised that I hadn't said a word for some time what crops did they grow he asked and I tried to rouse myself enough to keep on speaking while still retaining focus on these strange shifting scenes I see Tomatoes but even as I say that it seems to me once that I read that people didn't eat tomatoes in those days but yes the people in the small villages did and wheat and barley they had cows the cobbler was an old man he was also the sexton of the small Church the Church of England he used to ring the bells his wife was 53 Anna she wore glasses and had greyish white hair and was very stout and messy there was a boy in the shop - not their son an apprentice to the cobbler he slept in the kitchen his name was Albert lang he was 11 I think the cobbler and his wife had no children she had trouble with her glasses most people didn't wear any they were handmade they had to grind the glass they were like magnifying glasses in a frame on her nose the cobbler was comparatively well-off though not wealthy he was 53 when he died the boy Albert was too young to take over the shop and for a couple of years the village had no cobbler and the boy was a fisherman then another cobbler came and Albert helped out in the shop again he finally married his wife's name was also Sara she was a cousin of Sara Wellington's most of the people in the village were related in one way or another they had no other place to go I stopped speaking again for a few minutes I don't know if my eyes were open or closed and in any case the room was so dark that Rob could just manage to see in order to make notes all I saw were the vivid places and people and I spoke in jerky quick sentences sometimes with no effort to make complete sentences what do you see now Rob asked the Main Street I laughed out loud because I saw it so clearly I see houses and a couple of shops then a narrow cobbled walk raised up high it was a partly dirt road built up of rocks and stones that ran around an inlet from the sea but it was never flooded the road kept the village dry there wasn't any sandy beach though would you know it if you saw it in physical life now if you took a trip to England Rob asks no it's not there now I don't think I'd know the spot it was just the little Inlet with the rocky hills and not much grass it wasn't a seaport big ships couldn't get in close there was just enough room for the little boats to go out for fish my inner gaze traveled up the hills beyond the village I felt myself climbing but Rob interrupted how far was it from London and suddenly I knew the answer and saw a dark landscape from above there were other flurries of images that I also described it was two days overland by stage two days by horseback they made about twenty miles a day they didn't like to travel after dark it was too dangerous there were too many robbers so they always stayed at an inn that was about halfway there it was called Sedgwick they'd get there by the evening of the first day in the end there was a huge fireplace their dishes were made of earthenware they had ale and was served with meals their meat was rims mutton ribs and something called browse and water they had bread barley bread and soup fish soup and mussels they didn't have salt they had beans I don't know what kind they always carried pistols the pistols were black and long much longer than pistols today there was a at the top that they kept powder in I don't know what for suddenly I started laughing I was seeing this pistol' very clearly but I have absolutely no interest in guns and no knowledge of them at all so it was difficult to explain how the pistol was made I didn't know the names of the parts it seemed increased that I could have a vision of such a simple object and then not have the vocabulary to describe it yet I seemed to know everything about the gun part of me was aware of the strangeness of the situation and of the flickering candle light in which Rob was furiously taking notes another part of my consciousness was focused on the gun and I was intent upon describing it as well as possible they they made bullets and put powder into them the powder and the bullets were kept separate until they were put into the gun though one or two bullets were always kept ready they saved the bullets if they could find them after firing the metal was hard to get the guns were awfully heavy these bullets were something new they didn't last they stopped making them for some reason I don't understand the bullets might explode the men didn't want to keep the powder and bullets together sometimes the powder was rusty and sometimes whitish they were big bullets one of the reasons the guns were so large the people didn't go to London often some never went at all the first Sarah who died at 17 never went albert's Sarah went King Edward was in London Bend Albert and Sarah did well and could afford to go when Edward was crowned they made the trip they didn't see the coronation she was 41 and he was 46 at the time they had two or three children I don't know what happened to them Albert liked to hunt but he couldn't get much because the ground was too rocky deer and rabbits a special kind of rabbit no big tails gray hairs of some kind and there were grey squirrels then the images dispersed and for a very brief moment there seemed to be a gray fog and through it I seemed to see the town in a still more distant past the town had been there for at least 350 years I told you the name before lemon Shire before that it had been a different name there were invasions a lot of them came along the coast earlier the Norseman and I guess the gulls the dolls looked French swarthy and they were little men everyone knows what the Norseman looked like then suddenly I was back again seeing the later time in London I don't know why Albert's wife liked to go to the bakery shops they had fancier breads there than in the village and Sarah the first one if she hadn't burned to death would have died anyhow at 17 of tuberculosis one lung was bad it was a bad place to live the village wasn't sunny and they kept the windows closed there weren't many windows anyway the land was so rocky and they would build a house on a slab of rock and it was always damp Sarah's dress was dirty it was wound a brown natural color because it wasn't dyed it wouldn't have burned so but it had grease on it and the grease caught the flames I shivered seeing the dress catch fire and watching once again as the cobbler rolled the girl out into the street beating at the flames then I seemed to be above the town again looking down but dimly the descendants of the invaders lived in the village too there was the Levine family and D Nagy and the Bream's they slept on hay it was so damp and Goffe and the hay was never dry it was quiet again Rob didn't know exactly what to do so he just asked the first question that came into his head were the people happy that's a silly question I retorted but with a great impartiality it didn't seem that it was me replying at all there were happy as anyone else then they didn't like their babies dying but they just thought that that was life they drink a lot most of them couldn't read well the sexton could some not much people didn't think it was necessary they didn't have books so what good did it do to learn to read if you could write their names but usually they couldn't read other people's names they didn't have water to drink there was salt in the ocean that's why they washed their but they thought that drinking water was unhealthy it was hilly and rocky behind the village but there was a stream up there and they went up with horses and buckets but they didn't drink the water they drank ale they made soups from the water though and there were lucky that the stream came down from a high place otherwise they'd have to dig down too far they boiled the water for soups this killed a lot of the germs so they were actually healthier than other communities who had more water since a good deal of it was polluted they used natural liquids from animals when they made stews I stopped suddenly all of it was gone I told rob and he switched the lights on that was something I said did I somehow go back in space and time or did I hallucinate the entire episode what did it feel like what do you think about it I don't know I said I saw so much so clearly and I seemed to change position in the air or in space though I knew I was there in this room could I have seen an old movie when I was a child forgotten it and then hallucinating scenes from it all without knowing it's certainly possible Rob said even that would show the minds fantastic abilities but I have something to tell you too just before you got started I had a vision of my own why didn't you tell me I asked I couldn't just as it vanished you started to go into the English thing well what did you see well I saw feet of a man he was walking along a flat dusty reddish road I think it was barefoot though now I wonder about some kind of rudimentary sandal he had a brownish long robe flapping about the calves of his legs the legs were thin what was his face like I asked rob grinned I couldn't see his head shoulders or even waist the land was very flat reds and brands there was nothing in the far distance on the left beyond the feet for a moment though I thought I saw a group of pyramids far head on the horizon to the right they were in cool brilliant color blues or greens I couldn't see the basis of these though and I'm not even sure they were pyramids but I saw the souls of the man's feet wrinkled and brown and yes without shoes lifting after each stride they were covered with dust my experience was great I said but it was something like a moving picture I was looking at from a crazy angle the scenes would change to I'd be looking at the Main Street and then suddenly I'd be in the hills beyond the village not really there like I'm in this room now but partially floating very dim at times but your vision was quicker more limited but very precise I'm going to do a sketch or painting of it Rob said the colors were terrific do you know who the man was I asked I'll ask Seth Rob said smiling or maybe he wasn't anyone I wonder if my own town was real to me it was then isn't that enough for now Rob said I nodded at the very least there was enough material for a good short story on the whole thing I thought yet the village and the scenes lingered in my memory we've only been involved in this stuff a little over a month I said I'm content for now but we're going to have to try and check some of this out if it keeps on we will don't worry about that in the meantime it is what it is Rob said yeah but is if what it is like Willy our cat is Rob began to laugh that's part of the fun of it he said finding out in number three thank you Jane Roberts and Robert F Beth's based light in the Aloha you [Music] you you