“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Ruburt wondered later if I dreamed. My own usual state of consciousness is far different from yours. I do not alternate between waking and sleeping as you do. Still, I have states of consciousness that could be compared to your dream state, in that I am myself not as involved in them as I am in others. If I said to you, “I control my dream state,” you might have an idea of what I mean. Yet I do not control my dreams — I fulfill them. What you could call my dreaming state is involved with the levels I spoke of that exist beneath your remembered dreams.

(Pause.) I said earlier that there were many kinds of knowledge. Think of them instead as states of knowledge. Perception of any of these takes a consciousness attuned to each. In my “waking” condition, I operate at many levels of consciousness at once, and deal therefore with different systems of knowledge. In my “dream” condition, or rather conditions, I form links of consciousness that combine these various systems, creatively forming them into new versions. “Waking” again, I become consciously aware of those activities, and use them to add to the dimensions of my usual state, creatively expanding my experience of reality. What I learn is transmitted automatically to others like me, and their knowledge is transmitted to me.

(Pause at 10:05.) We are each consciously aware of these transmissions. In the terms usually familiar to you, you think of “the conscious mind.” In those terms, there are many conscious minds. You are so prejudiced, however, that you ignore information that you have been taught cannot be conscious. All of your experience, therefore, is organized according to your beliefs.

It is much more natural to remember your dreams than not to remember them. It is presently in the vogue to say that the conscious mind, as you consider it, deals with survival. It deals with survival only insofar as it promotes survival in your particular kind of society. In those terms, if you remembered your dreams, and if you benefited consciously from that knowledge, even your physical survival would be better assured.

One level of dream life deals particularly with the biological condition of the body, giving you not just hints of health difficulties, but the reasons for them and the ways to circumvent them. Information about the probable future is also given to help you make conscious choices. You have taught yourselves that you cannot be conscious in your dreams, however, because you interpret the word “conscious” so that it indicates only your own prejudiced concept. As a result, you do not have any culturally acceptable patterns that allow you to use your dreams competently.

Trance states, daydreaming, hypnotism — these give you some hint of the various differences that can occur from the standpoint of waking consciousness. In each, reality appears in another fashion, and for that matter, different rules apply. In the dream state far greater variations occur. The key to the dream state, however, lies in the waking one as far as you are concerned. You must change your ideas about dreaming, alter your concepts about it, before you can begin to explore it. Otherwise your own waking prejudice will close the door.

My remark has nothing to do with your accepted concepts of the unconscious portions of the self. Your ideas of the unconscious are so linked to your limited ideas of personhood as to be meaningless in this discussion. It is as if you used only one finger of one hand, and then said: “This is the proper expression of my personhood.” It is not just that there are other functions of the mind, unused, but that in those terms you have other minds. You have one brain, it is true, but you allow it to use only one station, or to identify itself with only one mind of many.

It seems evident to you that one person has one mind. You identify with the mind you use. If you had another, then it would seem as if you must be someone else. A mind is a psychic pattern through which you interpret and form reality. You have physical limbs that you can see. You have minds that are invisible. Each one can organize reality in a different fashion. Each one deals with its own kind of knowledge.

These minds all work together to keep you alive through the physical structure of the brain. When you use all of these minds, then and only then do you become fully aware of your surroundings: You perceive reality more clearly than you do now, more sharply, brilliantly, and concisely. At the same time, however, you comprehend it directly. You comprehend what it is apart from your physical perception of it. You accept as yourself those other states of consciousness native to your other minds. You achieve true personhood.

Ruburt’s nearly forgotten dream last night represents a breakthrough, in that he was at least consciously aware of receiving knowledge in yet another different fashion.

He could not verbalize it, nor did he have a suitable pattern to contain it. He received it, however. His painting of late is no coincidence, for he is dealing with nonverbal information, organizing data in another way, and thus activating other “portions” of the mind.

This type of perception cannot be described until he forms suitable verbal patterns that can come only with further experience. In this, I am a touchstone. He accelerates mentally to a certain degree, and that puts him in touch with me — an additional energy source. He activates certain portions of the brain that connect it to another mind, that people do not as yet realize they possess.