“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My dear Jesuit. Do I not try to explain things clearly, and am I not grossly misunderstood? (This was pure banter, between the two of them.) I have said all along that I am myself, and Ruburt is someone else. It follows that our gestures would be different. Wouldn’t you say so?

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.

Now and then with Ruburt, to a greater or lesser degree, my own habits therefore show through, for I use his muscles in a different way than he does. But scientifically, this would not be proof of my existence as an independent personality who has survived death. Not that this concerns me, for it does not.

3. Dream locations that represent definite places that appear as they were in the past. If you dream of your childhood home as it was, not as it is now, then the location would belong in this category.

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.

Again, however, this excellent balance and these fine controls exist. The ego will accept knowledge derived from the dream state as a man might accept a message from a distant land in which he does not care to dwell and whose environment would both mystify and astonish him.