“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.

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.

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 method is really easy and workable — but it can be sabotaged. One of my students, Gloria, had great difficulty remembering her dreams until I discovered that she was using a clock radio to awaken her in the morning and the news happened to be on. The dreams must be recalled before you become mentally involved with the world’s activities.

If you have remembered only unpleasant dreams in the past, you may have built up a block against recalling any dreams at all. Mrs. Taylor, another student, had this problem. She gave herself the proper suggestions each night but had the greatest difficulty in remembering even one dream. “Maybe you really don’t want to remember any,” I said.

The method of dream recall just given will allow many people to remember more dreams in a month than they previously did in their entire lives. Variations will occur, however. Periods of excellent recall are sometimes followed by poorer ones, and each individual seems to have his own cycle of significant activity.

The number of remembered dreams should be much higher than your present system allows. … I also suggest that the first recalled dream for any given evening be compared with the first recalled dream from other evenings, and that the second recalled dream from any one evening be compared with the second dream from other evenings, and so forth.

You may try two different wordings for a start, and now I am speaking of precise wording. The first: ‘I will wake up after each of my first five dreams and record each one immediately.’ The second alternative wording would be the same as the one I have just given, but the ‘wake up’ would be omitted. That is, it is possible for you to record the dreams, speaking into the microphone without awakening in your terms.

This is not only possible but by far the most convenient. You should try both methods and discover which one works the best for you. If at all possible, the recorder should be in the bedroom (not in another part of the house.) It is the immediate dream recall we are after. We want you to record the dream at the instant of awakening or at the instant that the dream is about to dissolve.

The time involved in going from one room to another could result in the loss of dream content and vividness. The very motor responses demanded on the part of the body and the extra arousal tendency would force you to lose a good deal of valid material. I would prefer that you work less, if necessary, using the recorder in the bedroom, than work more intensively leaving the recorder in another room.

The present within which you seem to experience the dream is not, however, the present in physical time — the present in which your body lies upon the bed. There is a fine distinction here and one that you will learn through experience as you go on, so I will not discuss it now.

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.

I use one hand, and he uses the other primarily.

I always used one hand, and he used the other.

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.

Once my interest was aroused, I was really determined to find out where I went and what I did in my dreams. In one study of eight hundred of my own dreams, I was really surprised to find that only seventy of them took place in my old hometown, and even here, as a rule, the action involved the present rather than the past. Previously I’d taken it for granted that a much larger percentage of my dreaming involved childhood places.

I was also interested in what I did in dreams — not just generally, but for any given night. During one period of four nights, I recorded twenty-one dreams. In these I was involved in four exciting episodes in which I ran from danger, used my wits to overcome it or faced it directly. I ran through radioactive rain (in a dream that, oddly enough, proved precognitive!), wandered through lovely gardens, explored several unfamiliar houses, and spoke with a well-known author whom I’ve never met. Not bad, I thought, for someone who hadn’t left the bed all night!

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.

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.

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.