“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Investigation of Dream Reality

Dream Investigation

Third, we were involved in vigorous subjective activity as we began to experiment with Seth’s psy-time regularly and to follow his suggestions concerning dream investigation, recall and utilization. When we began, neither Rob nor I really suspected that there was a separate dream dimension in which dreams happened. Though Seth told us that the experiments in dream recall would automatically make our consciousness more flexible, his real meaning didn’t come through to me until I found myself manipulating dreams and later having out-of-body experiences from the dream state.

Dream investigation or manipulation as an aesthetic pursuit — as an art, embarked upon for its own sake — this is something else again and is sometimes suspect because of its solitary nature. Yet the fact remains that there is a dream reality with a “structure,” “landscape” and images that appear to be made of matter — but matter that obeys different rules than those with which we are familiar.

Just reading such ideas will never convince you of their validity. Seth has always emphasized that all true knowledge must be directly experienced; therefore, I will include throughout this book his instructions and suggestions for dream recall, investigation and manipulation.

Because we must start somewhere, however, we will begin with dream recall and those practical aspects of dream investigation that let us use our dreams in daily life. For one thing, Seth followed this procedure with us, and it is the method I use to lead my students into dream reality. This is a gradual process that gently leads the ego into largely unfamiliar territory and at the same time encourages flexibility of consciousness.

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.

It wasn’t until 1965 that Seth began to suggest variations of the early dream recall instructions and to add other techniques for more advanced dream investigation. Here are a few excerpts from that material.

With the method I have just given you, you will be able to capture as much of the whole dream experience as any investigators manage to do (in dream-labs) when the awakening is done by a mechanical device or by another person. You will also be gaining excellent discipline and training over your own states of consciousness and this, in itself, will be an important yardstick of progress for you both. …

The nature of reality can be approached only by an investigation of it as it is directly experienced in all levels of awareness: reality as it appears under dream conditions, under other conditions of dissociation and as it appears in the waking state. Even studies dealing with the conscious state are usually superficial, dealing only with ‘upper’ levels of egotistical awareness. …