“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In a manner of speaking the activity of your brain adjusts the speed with which you, as a physical creature, perceive life’s events. Theoretically, those events could be slowed down or run at a quicker pace. Again in a manner of speaking, the sound, vision, dimensional solidarity and so forth are “dubbed in.” The picture runs at the same speed, more or less. The physical senses chime in together to give you a dramatic sensual chorus, each “voice” keeping perfect time with all the other sensual patterns so that as a rule there is harmony and a sense of continuity, with no embarrassing lapses.

(9:44.) Your brain gives you a handy and quite necessary reference system with which to conduct corporal life. It puts together for you in their “proper” sequences events that could be experienced in many other ways, using other kinds of organization. The brain, of course, and other portions of the body, tune into your planet and connect you with numberless time sequences — molecular, cellular, and so forth — so that they are synchronized with the world’s events.

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.

None could be given, because the information deals with time scales that the more “sophisticated” portions of the brain can no longer handle.

This is most difficult to explain, but the capacity for full conscious life is inherent in each portion of the body itself. Otherwise, in fact, its smooth synchronicity would be impossible. The brain has abilities you do not use consciously because your beliefs prevent you from initiating the proper neural habits. Certain portions of the brain seem dominant only because of those neural habits that are adopted in any given civilization or time. But other cultures in your past have experienced reality quite differently as a result of encouraging different neural patterns, and putting experience together through other focuses.

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.

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 physical waking life, you must do one thing or another, generally speaking. Obviously I am simplifying, since you can eat an orange, watch television, scratch your foot, and yell at the dog — all more or less at the same time. You cannot, however, be in Boston and San Francisco at the same time, or be 21 years of age and 11 at the same time.

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.

Take all the time you want to with this. Then explore your own conscious sense perceptions of the orange. Dwell on its taste, texture, odor, shape. Again, do this playfully, and take your time. Then let your own associations flow in your mind. What does the orange remind you of? When did you first see or taste one? Have you ever seen oranges grow, or orange blossoms? What does the color remind you of?

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.

(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.

This session is dictation for the book — and in answer to your question at the same time. And (humorously) this is an example of a double session. Now if you have no questions —