“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Man explored the physical world in the dreaming state long before he explored it physically. Such dreams gave him the assurance that other lands existed outside of his own, and spurred him onward into those physical expeditions in which the species has always taken a particular delight.

As far as group dreaming is concerned, however, there are still some people who have always served as watchdogs in that regard, while others even in the dream state operate as healers or teachers or explorers or whatever. There is no craft that was not first conceived of by an individual dreamer, who later transferred it to the social world of activity.

In the dreaming state, then, the needs and desires of families, communities and countries are well known. The dream state serves as a rich source for the world’s knowledge, and is also therefore responsible for the outgrowth of its technology. This is a highly important point, for “the technological world out there” was at one time the world of dreams. The discoveries and inventions that made the industrial world possible were always latent in man’s mind, and represented an inner glittering landscape of probability that he brought into actualization through the use of dreams—the intuitive and the conscious manipulation of material that was at one time latent.

We talked about how people could be helped to consciously realize their participation in this worldwide dream organization. Why, I wondered, couldn’t the nations of the world set up cooperative studies to verify its existence? At once, I told Jane, I thought that science and religion would be violently opposed to the idea, at least in the beginning, for it would challenge many rigid beliefs held by each of those disciplines. In deeper terms, of course, such a study would actually validate the sources of science and religion [just as it would confirm Seth’s material on dreams, incidentally!]. The experiment has the potential for significantly broadening our conscious understanding of the world we’re creating.

Setting up such a global organization to study dreams, I told Jane, with some amusement, would probably require a decade of arguing among nations. Would governments gather the information, or independent agencies? How would all of this be paid for, administered and analyzed? How long would it take to acquire statistically significant data? Would the peoples of the world cooperate? I said they most enthusiastically would, for if Seth is right the dream research would have a sound intuitive basis: It would uncover and reinforce many deeper aspects of our individual and collective beings—and I know of few things more important than that consciously we understand ourselves as well as we can in order to meet the great challenges we’re creating. But, I said, imagine trying to win the cooperation of the nations of the world for such an undertaking! Actually, it would be quite an advance if we could even agree to begin talking about such a study.