“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(While we were out for a drive in the country yesterday, Jane abruptly wondered aloud if Seth ever dreamed. If he did, what was his dream state like? Tonight at 9:00 she told me she thought he’d answer her questions by weaving them into the book session.

The kind of knowledge upon which you depend needs verbalization. It is very difficult for you to consider the accumulation of any kind of knowledge without the use of language as you understand it. Even your remembered dreams are often verbalized constructs. You may also use images, but these are familiar images, born of the educated and hence prejudiced physical perceptions. Those remembered dreams have meaning and are very valuable, but they are already organized for you to some extent, and put into a shape that you can somewhat recognize.

(9:41.) Beneath those levels, however, you comprehend events in an entirely different fashion. These whole comprehensions are then packaged even in the dream state, and translated into usual sense terms.

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.

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.

(Seth immediately began a short discussion of a dream Jane had last night. She hardly remembered it, but wrote in her notebook this morning that she knew it involved a new, rather odd kind of perception that she couldn’t verbalize at all. Since this fits in with Seth’s chapter here, I’m including his comments:)

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.

The Cézanne material, the dream and the painting, are all aspects of another kind of perception. Your joint library experiments^* helped set the stage, as you added your encouragement. All of this will help Ruburt toward a nonverbal comprehension that will, on another level, reorganize some of his beliefs.