“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Early last week a friend sent me a copy of a “double dream” experienced by his lady. Then as Jane and I were discussing the episode last Friday night, I found myself saying that one explanation for double dreams — that is, the awareness of experiencing two dreams at once, or a dream within a dream — could be that each half of the brain has its own separate dream, the two dreams then try to emerge together into ordinary consciousness.

(Each dream would be characteristic of the functions of the hemisphere of the brain that experienced it, I added, as we think of those functions in the light of current knowledge. The left hemisphere, being more analytical and intellectual, would have dreams embodying those qualities; the more creative right hemisphere would have dreams involving symbols, the arts, and the emotions.

(As I talked so easily about this, without any conscious foreknowledge or preparation, I realized I’d been mulling over our friend’s letter, and that this was the way my ideas spontaneously came out. I further said that although the two hemispheres of the brain were separate, they were united at the brain stem and by the corpus callosum, and so there were all kinds of interchanges between them. In the same way, in the double dream there would be relationships between the two dreams.

(Later, Jane suggested that I ask Seth to comment upon the ideas in a session. There would also be a number of other reasons for double dreams, of course. I briefly wrote about them in Volume I of “Unknown” Reality; see the notes for Session 692.)

Even dreams are so imprinted. When one portion or one half of the brain is activated, for example, the corresponding portion of the other half is also activated, but at levels scientists do not perceive. It is ridiculous to call one side or the other of the brain dominant, for the full richness of the entire earth experience requires utilization of both halves, as does dreaming.

In dreaming, however, the full sense-picture usually projected by the brain, and reinforced by bodily action, is not necessary. Those dream experiences often seem out of joint or out of focus in morning’s hindsight, or in retrospect, simply because they occur with a complexity that the brain could not handle in ordinary waking terms.

The body obviously must react in your official present; hence the brain neatly keeps its physical time sequences with spaced neural responses. The entire package of physical reality is dependent upon the senses’ data being timed — synchronized — giving the body an opportunity for precise action. In dreams the senses are not so restrained. Events from past, present, and future can be safely experienced, as can events that would be termed probable from your usual viewpoint, since the body, again, is not required to act upon them.

Dreaming, for example, can be “brought into focus” in a far sharper fashion, so that at least some of those experiences can be consciously utilized. When this happens, you are consciously taking advantage of experience that is physically and logically extracurricular.

You are bringing into your consciousness traces of events that have not been registered in the same way that waking events are (emphatically) by the brain. The dream events are partially brain-recorded, but the brain separates such experience from waking events. Dreams can provide you with experience that in a manner of speaking, at least, is not encountered in time. The dream itself is recorded by the brain’s time sequences, but in the dream itself there is a duration of time “that is timeless.”

Theoretically, certain dreams can give you a lifetime’s experience to draw upon, though the dream itself can take less than an hour in your time. In a way, dreams are the invisible thickness of your normal consciousness. They involve both portions of the brain. Many dreams do activate the brain in a ghostly fashion, sparking responses that are not practically pertinent in ordinary terms. That is, they do not require direct action but serve as anticipators of action, reminders to the brain to initiate certain actions in its future.

(10:33.) Dreams are so many-leveled that a full discussion requires an almost impossible verbal expertise. For while dreams do not necessitate action on the part of the whole body, and while the brain does not register the entire dream, the dream does serve to activate biological action — by releasing hormones, for example.

There are also what I will call body dreams. No consciousness, to whatever degree, is fully manifested in matter. There is always constant communication between all portions of the body, but when the conscious mind is diverted that activity often increases. Cellular consciousness at its own level then forms a body dream. These do not involve pictures or words, but are rather like the formations of electromagnetic intent, anticipating action to be taken, and these may then serve as initiators of therapeutic dreams, in which “higher” levels of consciousness are psychologically made aware of certain conditions.

Many problems, however, are anticipated through body dreams, and conditions cleared at that level alone.

Now: While consciousness enjoys its physical orientation, it is also too creative to confine its activities in one direction. Dreams provide consciousness with its own creative play, therefore, when it need not be so practical or so “mundane,” allowing it to use its innate characteristics more freely.

Many people are aware of double or triple dreams, when they seem to have two or three simultaneous dreams. Usually upon the point of awakening, such dreams suddenly telescope into one that is predominant, with the others taking subordinate positions, though the dreamer is certain that in the moment before the dreams were equal in intensity. Such dreams are representative of the great creativity of consciousness, and hint of its ability to carry on more than one line of experience at one time without losing track of itself.

In double dreams and triple dreams consciousness shows its transparent, simultaneous nature. Several lines of dream experience can be encountered at the same time, each complete in itself, but when the dreamer wakes to the fact, the experience cannot be neurologically translated; so one dream usually predominates, with the others more like ghost images.

There are too many varieties of such dreams to discuss here, but they all involve consciousness dispersing, yet retaining its identity, consciousness making loops with itself. Such dreams involve other sequences than the ones with which you are familiar. They hint at the true dimensions of consciousness that are usually unavailable to you, for you actually form your own historical world in the same manner, in that above all other experiences that one world is predominant, and played on the screen of your brain.

Then pretend you are having a dream that begins with the image of an orange. Follow the dream in your mind. Next, pretend that you are waking from the dream to realize that another dream was simultaneously occurring, and ask yourself quickly what that dream was. Followed in the same sequence given, the exercise will allow you to make loops with your own consciousness, so to speak, to catch it “coming and going.” And the last question — what else were you dreaming of? — should bring an entirely new sequence of images and thoughts into your mind that were indeed happening at the same time as your daydream about the orange.

A double dream is like the double life lived by some people who have two families — one in each town — and who seemingly manipulate separate series of events that other people would find most confusing. If the body can only follow certain sequences, still consciousness has inner depths of action that do not show on the surface line of experience. Double dreams are clues to such activity.

(11:41.) These strands are like double dreams that continue. They also serve as a framework to the recognized self. In periods of stress or challenge the recognized self may sense these other strains of consciousness, and realize that a fuller experience is possible, a greater psychological thickness. On some occasions in the dream state the recognized self may then enlarge its perception enough to take advantage of these other portions of its own identity. Double or triple dreams may represent such encounters at times. Consciousness always seeks the richest, most creative form, while ever maintaining its own integrity. The imagination, playing, the arts and dreaming, allow it to enrich its activities by providing feedback other than that received in the physical environment itself.

— I bid you a doubly fond good evening, and I hope you have some excellent double dreams.