“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

As the Seth sessions continued, our activities fell generally into three main divisions. First of all, the emphasis was on the delivery of the Seth Material itself, as in the twice-weekly sessions Seth continued to explain the nature of nonphysical reality. Second, we became involved in trying to obtain “evidential” material, some definite instances of extrasensory perception on Seth’s part. Along these lines, we embarked on long-distance tests with a psychologist and a year’s series of envelope tests in which Seth was asked to identify the contents of doubly-sealed envelopes. At the same time, Seth began to send me on out-of-body journeys during some sessions and to offer, on his own, other instances of “paranormal” activity.

Yet, even when we admit the inspirational and supportive nature of dreams, even when we learn to recall dreams and apply them to daily life, we still only begin to glimpse their multidimensional reality. Dream interpretation is important to our three-dimensional mentalities, for example. We believe in utilization; if dreams can’t be useful, then what good are they? Dreams can give us consistent, valid information about our motives, needs and decisions. They can be utilized as very practical aids to daily life. But this is only a portion of any real exploration of dream reality.

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.

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.

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.’

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 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. …

There are connections between these two conditions, and there are definite realities that exist in both states, and these are what you are looking for. Only by finding these can you discover the nature of human personality and the nature of reality within which it operates.

If you are thinking in terms of secondary personalities, you can prove nothing one way or another. A secondary personality would also use different gestures. Either way, this would be no proof of my independent nature, but I’m glad to see you’ve been thinking about it.

Until we actually tried the dream experiments, we didn’t really have too clear an idea of what to expect. This series of sessions in which Seth explained dream reality and gave us instructions about exploring it, always struck me as highly evocative, yet oddly ambiguous. In a way, Seth was as nebulous as dreams are, but we already had over two thousand pages of manuscript he had dictated through me in trance; and surely he had changed our lives. Now here he was, telling us how to travel through a territory more naturally his, I thought, than ours.

But if all this is so important, why can’t we do it more easily and naturally? Why do we need experiments? According to Seth, the way we use the ego and its idea of reality stand in our way. When he was still outlining these experiments for us, Seth explained this in some detail.

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.

Before we go into the various kinds of dreams and our experiences with them, the following chapter will give some preliminary material Seth gave us on the general nature of dream reality and our place in it.