“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

If we ever hope to “map” the dreamscape, we need a million trained dreamers: a million individuals trained to use dreams as vehicles and then, courageously, to leave them to explore the environment in which they find themselves. We need people able to distinguish between the environment-within-the-dream and the far vaster environment (or atmosphere or medium) in which these dream-places exist.

Records of individual dreams are not enough, nor are studies of the physiological effect of dreaming. Most psychologists would not admit the existence of a definite structured universe in which dream acts, rather than physical acts, happen. Therefore, at this time, they will not consider dreams in this larger context. Seth maintains that we will understand ourselves as dreamers only if we are also aware of the larger environment in which dreams take place, that we interact in the dream state as we do in the waking one and that we form mass dream events as we form physical events on a mass basis.

Now, mankind uses but a portion of its capabilities. When you are well along in these experiments, you will find that you handle them very well, with no draining of energies. Your sleeping hours are already productive. We shall also use them to give you training in the utilization of various stages of consciousness. Added to this, the training will give you valuable insight into the nature of dreams in general, the stages of the subconscious and the inner life of the personality when it is dissociated from its physical environment to some considerable extent.

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.

And the ego must have its feet upon solid earth. It is naked and out of its element outside of the normal environment of physical existence. To some extent, its distrust of the dream experience is necessary for the overall balance of the personality. Physical reality is, after all, a rock to which the ego must cling; from it, the ego achieves its prestige and reason for existence. … This provides necessary balance and control, and results in the sturdy anchorage of the personality in the environment in which it must presently survive. You have here one of the main reasons why you must request the subconscious to enable you to recall dreams. The ego would see no reason for such a memory and on general principles attempts to repress them.

Again, however, this excellent balance and these fine controls exist. The ego will accept knowledge derived from the dream state as a man might accept a message from a distant land in which he does not care to dwell and whose environment would both mystify and astonish him.

Usually the dream state is considered from a negative standpoint and compared unfavorably with the waking condition. Emphasis is laid upon those conditions present in the waking state but absent from the dreaming experience. We shall consider those aspects of consciousness which are present in the dream environment and absent in the physical one. No study of human personality can pretend to be thorough that does not take the importance of dream reality into consideration.

As mentioned previously, we will also deal with the nature of space, time and distance, as they appear in the dream environment. Some of our experiments along these lines will be most illuminating. Here the ego cannot go, but it can benefit from the information, and perhaps in time, even a shadow of the ego may pass through that strange land and feel in some small way at home.