Jane Roberts - Seth - Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment

284 Pages·2008·1.4 MB·English

D ,
REAMS

" ",
EVOLUTION

AND VALUE

FULFILLMENT

VOLUME I
BOOKS BY JANE ROBERTS
How to Develop Your ESP Power • 1966
The Seth Material • 1970
Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul • 1972
The Education of Oversoul Seven • 1973
The Nature of Personal Reality (A SETH BOOK) • 1974
Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect
Psychology 1975
Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time • 1975 Psychic
Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book • 1976 The "Unknown"
Reality (A SETH BOOK, TWO VOLUMES) • 1977-1979
The World View of Paul Cezanne: A Psychic
Interpretation • 1977 The After Death Journal of an
American Philosopher:
The World View of William James • 1978 The Further
Education of Oversoul Seven • 1979 Emir's Education in the Proper
Use of Magical Powers • 1979 The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human
Expression (A SETH
BOOK) • 1979
The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events (A SETH BOOK) •
1981
The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto • 1981
If We Live Again: Or, Public Magic and Private Love • 1982
Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time • 1984
A SETH BOOK

D ,
REAMS

" ",
EVOLUTION

AND VALUE

FULFILLMENT

VOLUME I
Jane Roberts

Introductory Essays and Notes by
Robert F. Butts

PRENTICE HALL PRESS • NEW YORK
Copyright © 1986 by Jane Roberts All
rights reserved, including the right of
reproduction in whole or in part in any
form.
Published by Prentice Hall Press
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Gulf + Western Building
One Gulf + Western Plaza
New York, NY 10023
PRENTICE HALL PRESS is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Roberts, Jane, 1929-1984 Dreams, "evolution," and
value fulfillment.
Includes index.
1. Spirit writings. 2. Reincarnation. I. Title.
BF1301.R589 1986 133.9'3 86-507 ISBN 0-13-
219452-X
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
This book is dedicated to my
husband, Robert F. Butts, for
his love and devotion.
Contents

Quotations from Seth 9
A Poem and Commentary by Jane Roberts 11
Introductory Essays by Robert F. Butts 13
Preface by Seth 95
Chapter 1 Before the Beginning 119
Chapter 2 In the Beginning 137
Chapter 3 Sleepwalkers. The World in Early Trance.
The Awakening of the Species 166
Chapter 4 The Ancient Dreamers 192
Chapter 5 The "Garden of Eden." Man "Loses"
His Dream Body and Gains a "Soul" 224
Chapter 6 Genetic Heritage and Reincarnational
Predilections 259
Index 286
Quotations from Seth

(A note by R.F.B.: The following quotations are from sessions Jane delivered
for her trance personality, Seth, just before and during the time she worked with
him on Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment. One is from a private
session, two are from "nonbook" regular sessions, and one is from Dreams
itself.)
"Science has unfortunately bound up the minds of its own even most
original thinkers, for they dare not stray from certain scientific principles. All
energy contains consciousness (underlined). That one sentence is basically
scientific heresy, and in many circles it is religious heresy as well. A
recognition of that simple statement would indeed change your world."
—FROM A PRIVATE SESSION, JULY 12, 1979
"I feel sometimes as if I am expected to justify life's conditions, when of
course they do not need any such justification."
—FROM SESSION 896, JANUARY 16, 1980
". . . basically, consciousness has nothing to do with size. If that were the
case, it would take more than a world-sized globe to contain the consciousness
of simply one cell"
—FROM SESSION 917, MAY 21, 1980, IN CHAPTER 8 OF DREAMS
"It is a gift, a boon, an exquisite pleasure, to become physically alive on
your functioning planet, couched securely within your dusk and dawn, your
existence supported by the seasons and by an overall operation of spontaneous
order."
—FROM SESSION 929, NOVEMBER 26, 1980
A Poem and Commentary

by Jane Roberts

(Jane experienced many painful physical and psychological delays while producing
Dreams. Finally, she had only six sessions to go for the book when she came through
with this material for herself:)
"On Friday, October 23, 1981, I received the following message from Seth:
'Attend to what is directly before you. You have no responsibility to save the world or
find the solutions to all problems—but to attend to your particular personal corner of
the universe. As each person does that, the world saves itself.'
"The same day I wrote:
Dawn is breaking.
Why should I lie in bed
worrying about my body or the world?
Before time was recorded
dawn has followed dusk
and all the creatures of the earth
have been couched
in the loving context
of their times.
"After writing the above poem I felt a sense of faith—and realized that like many
I'd become afraid of faith itself. It was a fear hidden in my deepest aspects. . . ."
Introductory Essays

by Robert F. Butts

August 12, 1982. Originally I'd planned to write the standard kind of
introduction for Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment. However,
as I became involved in describing the complicated, emotionally
charged series of events surrounding the hospitalization earlier this year
of my wife, Jane Roberts, the material automatically began organizing
itself into a series of dated essays. I was more than happy to follow this
intuition from my creative self, for it answered many questions I'd
started to consciously worry about.
We could have presented Dreams as is, or at least have avoided
mentioning certain less-than-advantageous circumstances surrounding
its production by Jane and by Seth, the "energy personality essence" she
speaks for while in a trance or dissociated state. The facts are, though,
that Jane's already impaired physical condition grew steadily worse
while she was working on the book. Shortly after finishing it, she went
into the hospital. Since we've always wanted to make sure that our
"psychic work" is given within the context of our daily living, I've
undertaken to present in these essays intensely personal material
relevant to the creation of Dreams. (The mechanics of Jane's still-
fascinating trance phenomenon have been described in some detail in
the six previous Seth books she's produced—with my help—and they'll
also be referred to, if briefly, in Dreams.)
I worked on the essays in succession, just as they're given here,
although I found myself adding to the earlier ones as I moved into the
later ones. In terms of length alone, it soon became
13
14 Jane Roberts
obviously impossible to write all of the material for any piece on the
date given. Even by going back over them, however, I couldn't discuss
everything I wanted to: The essays could have easily grown into a book
of their own. This weaving things together to make them "fit" is only
natural for one of my temperament, but I didn't alter any of my original
copy—that I'd have refused to do—and I kept intact those first
spontaneous descriptions of the events attendant to Jane's physical
difficulties, as well as our deep-seated, sometimes wrenching feelings
connected to them. I did not look at Seth-Jane's Dreams itself while
writing the essays, in order to avoid having them overly influenced by
work in the book. Instead, we want all of this preliminary material to
show how we live daily—regardless of how well we may or may not
do—with a generalized knowledge of, and belief in, the Seth material.
Seth, then, has finished his work on Dreams. I wrote the original
version of the notes for each book session as he delivered it through
Jane, and also began collecting other notes and reference material that
might be used. Since I've completed the essays, all I have to do now is
"refine" the session notes (and addenda) as I type the finished
manuscript. Jane will help as much as she can. We expect to have the
book ready for our editors, Tarn Mossman and Lynne Lumsden, by the
end of the year.
Jane appreciates that the dates I'm always giving merely furnish a
convenient framework for our material, but she's hardly enamored of
such precise methodology; she understands that it's my way of doing
things, realizes it's very useful, and goes on from there. I use a similar
system in presenting all of the published Seth material. It has the great
attribute of allowing for quick reference timewise (if not always by
subject matter) to any of the more than 1,500 regular, private or
deleted, and "ESP class" sessions Jane has given over the past 19
years—until July 1982, that is, when I began work on these passages.
Moreover, the choice of presenting the material in essay form proved
to have one virtue that was more valuable than all the others combined:
It allowed us to delve into the events I describe, and "our deep-seated,
sometimes wrenching feelings connected to them," a little bit at a time.
Those situations might have been too devastating for us otherwise, too
emotionally