“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I nodded, but I’d had a particularly interesting dream experience last night, and I also hoped that Seth might discuss that. As you’ll see, he managed to do both, winding a discussion of my dream into his own material about the psyche.)

Last night our friend, Joseph, had a dream experience that intrigued him, and yet seemed highly distorted. He found himself greeting a large number of people. He believed them to be family members, though he only recognized some. His parents, known to be dead, were there. A brother and a sister-in-law, who are alive, were also present. The brother was definitely himself, yet somehow altered in appearance, his features having an Oriental cast. The entire dream was very pleasant, and seemed to be like a home coming.

(10:07.) Your own waking consciousness deals specifically with certain kinds of distinctions. These help form the very structure of physical existence. They highlight your lives, providing them also with a kind of frame. Quite simply, you want to experience a certain kind of reality, so you put boundaries about events, that allow you to concentrate upon them. When an artist paints a picture, he uses discrimination. He or she chooses one area of concentration. Everything within the painting fits; so in your physical lives, you do the same thing.

In Joseph’s dream, his brother’s features had an Oriental cast. Joseph knew that his brother lived as himself, and also as an Oriental, unknown to Joseph in his present life. If Joseph had seen two people — one his brother and one an Oriental — he would not have recognized the stranger, so in the dream his brother’s known appearance dominated, while the Oriental affiliation is merely suggested. In your own lives you will use such psychic shorthand, or utilize symbols in which you try to explain the greater dimensions of one reality in terms of the known one.