“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.

I do have a thought, my Jesuit friend,

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.

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!