“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.

This section of the book will include excerpts from Seth’s manuscripts on the general nature of dream reality, dream investigation and recall and will be followed by a series of chapters on various kinds of dreams captured by Rob, my students and me as we checked out Seth’s theories, as far as we were able. Later, we will journey further into the inner dimension in which dreams take place.

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.

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, 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.

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.

Of course, though the face does not fully adopt my own expression. First of all, as far as the hands are concerned, to be left-handed or right-handed has to do with inner mechanisms and brain patterns that come before the motion of the hands. Characteristically, I operated in ways that resulted often in the primary use of my left hand when I was focused in physical matter.