“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now: We will begin with dictation — the continuation of Chapter Two.

Centuries ago, in your terms, words and images had a closer relationship — now somewhat tarnished — and this older relationship appears in the dream fabric. We will use English here as an example. The great descriptive nature of names, for instance, can give you an indication of the unity of image and word as they appear in your dreams. Once, a man who tailored clothes was named “Tailor.” A man who was a robber was called “Robber.” If you were the son of a man with a certain name, then “son of” was simply added, so you had “Robberson.” Each reader can think of many such examples.

Now, names are not as descriptive. You may have a dream, however, in which you see a tailor’s shop. The tailor may be dancing or dying or getting married. Later, in waking life, you may discover that a friend of yours, a Mr. Taylor (spelled), has a party, or dies, or gets married, whatever the case may be; yet you might never connect the dream with the later event because you did not understand the way that words and images can be united in your dreams.

When you dream, however, you are to some extent experiencing reality from a different “set” entirely. Now, when you try to adjust your dreaming set in the same way that you would the waking one, you end up with static and blurred images. The set itself, however, is quite as effective as the one you use when you are awake, and it has a far greater range. It can bring in many programs. When you watch your ordinary television program, perhaps on a Saturday afternoon, you view the program as an observer. Let me give you an example.

Now: Your normal waking reality can be compared to a kind of television drama in which you participate directly in all of the dramas presented. You create them to begin with. You form your private and joint adventures, and bring them into experience by using your physical apparatus — your body — in a particular way, tuned in to a large programming area in which, however, there are many different stations. In your terms, these stations come alive. You are the drama that you experience, and all of your activities seem to revolve about you. You are also the perceiver.

Ruburt and Joseph know that Star Trek is not “real.” Planets can explode on the television screen, and Ruburt will not spill one drop of coffee. The cozy living room is quite safe from the imaginary catastrophes that are occurring just a few feet from the couch. Yet in a way the program reflects certain beliefs of your society in general, and so it is like a specialized mass waking dream — real but not real. For a moment, though, let us change the program to your favorite cops-and-robbers show. A woman is shot down in the street. Now this drama becomes “more real,” more immediately probable, less comfortable. So watching such a program, you may feel slightly threatened yourself, yet still largely unconcerned.

(10:57. Seth now delivered several pages of material on other subjects for Jane and me. The session finally ended at 11:42 P.M.)