“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The interior universe is at least as rich, varied and complicated as the exterior one. Dream reality is only one aspect of this inner universe, in the same way that our planet is only one of many others in a physical sky. Before our experiments began, I used to think that dreams were relatively chaotic productions, with a few subconscious insights thrown in for good measure, now and then — a nightly retreat into idiocy for the tired brain. I considered sleep a small death in which all sense of continuity vanished. Most of the dreams I’d recalled until then had been nightmares — the self gone mad, I thought — so I wasn’t prepared for Seth’s emphasis on the importance of dreams.

But the problem ran deeper than this, as we discovered in class discussion. Like many people, Mrs. Taylor was brought up on a combined emotional porridge of orthodox religion and Freud. In her mind, Freud’s ideas of repressed subconscious material merged with religious teachings of hell and the origin of sin. Actually, she was afraid that dreams would reveal her “lower” instincts. I personally think that these distorted ideas about the nature of the inner self represent the main impediments to dream recall or to any real study of the subjective personality.

The unseen self is not a dungeon of repressed ideas and feelings, dangerous to behold, but the fountainhead of individual existence, upon which our present physical survival is dependent. Beyond this, it is our pathway to creative expression, inspiration and wisdom — a doorway to our own greater identity. This does not mean that we do not repress fears and desires beneath consciousness. It means that we must allow ourselves greater flexibility, look into ourselves, admit the fears and release the energy used in repression. As you will see later in this book, dreams can often release such repressed material for your conscious examination.

This should prove highly interesting, and if such experiments are carried on consistently over a period of years, then the results could lead to excellent evidence for the various layers of the subconscious and inner self, of which I have spoken for so long.

Now, there is something else to be considered. The very self-suggestions that will enable you to recall dreams will also change their nature to some extent. This is all right, and the effect will be minimized when the newness has worn off. Again, we want the dreams in the sequence in which they occur. If you do not want to wake up after each dream of the evening, then the suggestion should always include ‘I will recall the first three dreams … or the first five dreams, or whatever.’

Much later, there will be other suggestions for you in which you will direct your sleeping self to perform certain activities, visit certain locations and bring back information. This is obviously still very much in the future, but it is well within the abilities of the inner self.

All layers of the personality are ‘conscious.’ They simply operate like compartments, so that often one portion of the self is not aware of other portions. As a rule, when you are awake you do not know your sleeping self; you know your neighbor far better, so your sleeping self seems mysterious indeed. When you are awake, as Ruburt himself has written, you cannot find the dream locations that have been so familiar to you only the night before.

In your sleep, you may have greeted friends who are strangers to your waking self. But consider the other side of the coin. For when you are asleep, you usually cannot find the street upon which you live your waking hours, and when you are asleep, you do not know your waking self. The sleeping self is your identity.

The ego skims the topmost surface of reality and awareness. This is not the result of any inherent egotistical quality. It is true that the ego’s responsibility is with the relationship between the self and the physical environment. It must necessarily focus within the confines of physical reality. Nevertheless, it is fully capable of perceiving far more than Western man allows it to perceive. Fear, ignorance, and superstition limit its potentials and, therefore, limit even its effectiveness within the physical universe.

The ego in that case will therefore fight against what it then considers an unknown threat to survival. Struggles are initiated then that are entirely unnecessary. We want to bring intuitional comprehension to a point where the ego will accept it. In our dream experiments, this is one of the purposes we hope to achieve. The ego is not equipped to delve directly into nonphysical realities, but if it is trained to be flexible, it will accept such knowledge from other wider horizons of the self.

In some discussions we will state the ways in which conscious goals can be achieved with the help of the dreaming self. All of this material will be reinforced with experiments that, I hope, you will conduct yourselves.